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Behavioral and Brain Sciences

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Target Article

Cite this article: Tomasello M. (2020) The

moral psychology of obligation. Behavioral and

Brain Sciences 43, e56: 1–58. doi:10.1017/

S0140525X19001742

Target Article Accepted: 19 May 2019

Target Article Manuscript Online: 28 May 2019

Commentaries Accepted: 20 September 2019

Keywords:

cooperation; fairness; morality; motivation;

normativity; obligation; shared intentionality

What is Open Peer Commentary? What

follows on these pages is known as a

Treatment, in which a significant and

controversial Target Article is published

along with Commentaries (p. 12) and an

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Cambridge University Press

The moral psychology of obligation

Michael Tomasello

a,b

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany and

Department of Psychology and

Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708-0086

[email protected]

Abstract

Although psychologists have paid scant attention to the sense of obligation as a distinctly

human motivation, moral philosophers have identified two of its key features: First, it has a

peremptory, demanding force, with a kind of coercive quality, and second, it is often tied

to agreement-like social interactions (e.g., promises) in which breaches prompt normative

protest, on the one side, and apologies, excuses, justifications, and guilt on the other.

Drawing on empirical research in comparative and developmental psychology, I provide

here a psychological foundation for these unique features by showing that the human sense

of obligation is intimately connected developmentally with the formation of a shared agent

“we,” which not only directs collaborative efforts but also self-regulates them. Thus, children’s

sense of obligation is first evident inside, but not outside, of collaborative activities structured

by joint agency with a partner, and it is later evident in attitudes toward in-group, but not out-

group, members connected by collective agency. When you and I voluntarily place our fate in

one another’s hands in interdependent collaboration – scaled up to our lives together in an

interdependent cultural group – this transforms the instrumental pressure that individuals

feel when pursuing individual goals into the pressure that “we” put on me (who needs to

preserve my cooperative identity in this “we”) to live up to our shared expectations: a we

> me self-regulation. The human sense of obligation may therefore be seen as a kind of

self-conscious motivation.

Humans often do things out of a sense of obligation. But obligation is not a major topic in

modern psychology, not even in moral psychology. Presumably obligation is a kind of moti-

vation, but, if so, it is a decidedly peculiar one. It has at least two distinctive features.

1. Special Force. Obligation has a peremptory, demanding force, with a kind of coercive (neg-

ative) quality: I don’t want to, but I have to. Failure to live up to an obligation leads to a

sense of guilt (also demanding and coercive). Unlike the most basic human mo tivations,

which are carrots, obligation is a stick.

2. Special Social Structure. Obligation is prototypically bound up with agreements or prom-

ises between indivi duals, and so has an inherently social structure. It can even happen that

an outside party judges that an agent is obligated to do something although the agent him-

self does not think so. Breaches of obligations often prompt normative protest, from the

offended party, and apologies, excuses, and justifications from the offender.

My aim in this target article is to explain humans’ sense of obligation, including these two spe-

cial features, in moral psychological terms. Where did humans’ presumably species-unique

sense of obligation come from evolutionarily, and where does it come from ontogenetically?

What are its functions, and from what more primitive components was/is it built? My larger

goal in answering these questions is to fit obligation into a larger picture of human sociality.

1. Philosophical background

Despite its almost total neglect in psychology, obligation has been a major topic in moral phi-

losophy for centuries, albeit most often in the context of normative discussions attempting to

tell us what we are obligated to do. But there have been some influential descriptive approaches

as well (in so-called metaethics) that attempt to discern what human obligation is in the first

place. I consider in this secti on two such approaches, and then, in the sections that follow,

attempt to improve on them through modifications based on empirical results from the fields

of developmental and comparative psychology.

The first philosophers to consider obligation from a more or less psychological point of

view were the Enlightenment moral philosophers, especially David Hume (1751/1957).

Although contemporary research in moral psychology has focused mainly on what Hume

dubbed the natural virtues, such as sympathy, just as important in his overall account are

what he dubbed the artificial virtues, such as justice. The natural virtues are so-called because

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they have a more or less direct grounding in natural (presumably

evolved) human motives or passions, especially sympathy. But the

artificial virtues such as justice (and also what we would today call

fairness) have no such direct grounding in natural motives; they

govern human behavior only through a deliberative process in

which many factors are considered and weighed.

Hume argued that the artificial virtues such as justice (and

fairness) are grounded in human convention. Societies have

formulated rules for how individuals should behave when their

various interests are potentially in conflict. In many such cases,

individuals are willing to curtail their own self-interest and coop-

erate for some overall good, but only under the condition that

others cooperate as well (what today we call contingent coopera-

tion). Hume’s main example is private property: Each individual

is willing to forgo any motivations to appropriate the property of

others, given that others are willing to forgo their motivations to

appropriate his. This cooperative attitude is grounded at least

indirectly in sympathy, as individuals feel that for the good of

society as a whole – a kind of generalized sympathy for the social

group – individuals are inclined to follow the rule. Hume’s other

main example is promising. Although there are many occasions

on which breaking one’s promise would be advantageous to the

self or others, and cause no harm to anyone, sympathy and con-

cern for the smooth functioning of society as a whole recommend

always keeping one’s promises. But in neither property nor prom-

ises is sympathy for the group sufficient. People who respect prop-

erty and keep promises (and expect others to do so) also give a

judgment of approval to the rule – reflectively, from “the general

point of view”–and so they do not just follow the rule but feel

obliged to do so.

Hume’s account does not have much to say about obligation’s

special motivational force. Strawson (1962) argued that approaches

in which the individual simply sits back and observes others,

either approvingly or disapprovingly, are too passive to account

for humans’ normative relations to one another. He pointed out

that humans have and express participant reactive attitudes toward

others, such attitudes as resentment and blame when others treat

them badly, or gratitude and forgiveness when others treat them

well. Scanlon (1998) argued that this more active way of relating

to others falls within a delimited domain of human morality hav-

ing to do with “what we owe to each other.” This appellation seems

appropriate in the current context because it matches our intuition

that the sense of obligation is a feeling of owing someone some-

thing (we even describe an obligation as being in someone’s

debt). A growing number of philosophers have focused on this

delimited domain in recent years, most prominently Darwall

(2006; 2013a) (see also Wallace 1994; 2019).

In focusing specifically on obligation, Darwall (2006; 2013a)

has pointed out the existence of what have been called bipolar

moral attitudes (see also Thompson 2004 ). If doing X would

break my promise to you, for example, then I have an obligation

not to do it, and, correspondingly, you have a right to expect me

not to do it. The obligation from me to you and the right from you

to me together define one another (see Hohfeld 1923). And it is

an empirical fact that, in human moral communities, individuals

actively assert their rights; they actively hold one another account-

able for keeping their obligations. They do this by expressing their

reactive attitudes, such as resentment and blame, to those who

have reneged in acts of so-called moral protest, to which they

expect/demand an appropriate response in return (Smith 2013).

Then, if the offender wishes to keep her good standing as a

moral being (in both her own eyes and those of others), she

must in some way recognize the legitimacy of the protest – for

example, by apologizing or makin g an excuse (demonstrating

shared values despite the breach).

Darwall’s account is especially useful from a psychological

point of view because he makes some specific claims about the

way that individuals enter into these kinds of bipolar relations.

For individuals in a community to hold one another morally

accountable in the human-like way, they must possess what he

calls second-personal competence, and they must recognize one

another as having such com petence in more or less equal mea-

sure. Thus, each must recognize and respect others in their

community “as someone ‘just like me’” (Darwall 2013c, p. 29).

Each individual sees herself as “one mutually accountable agent

among others” (Darwall 2013c, p. 7). Second-personal agents dis-

play “mutual respect between mutually accountable persons”

(Darwall 2006, p. 36). Accordingly, a second-personal agent can

expect another second-personal agent to hold himself account-

able, such that he will respond appropriately to blaming (e.g.,

by giving a good excuse or by apologizing). And, of course, a

second-personal agent at the same time gives other persons the

authority to call him out when he transgresses. To participate

in such a system of mutual accountability, Darwall claims that

the individual must be a rational agent with the capacity for reac-

tive attitudes (such as blame) and also basic empathy (to put one-

self in another’s shoes), as well as “the capacities to make and

regulate oneself by normative judgments about what attitudes are

warranted” (Darwall 2013c, p. 47; e.g., by accepting blame or feel-

ing guilty). Household pets and young human infants do not have

such competencies and, therefore, do not participate in a system

in which individuals hold one another mutually accountable.

So long as a being has the capacity to take a second-person standpoint

toward others and himself, make judgments about what demands would

be warranted from this perspective, and (self-)regulate his conduct

through making the relevant demands of himself [e.g., through feelings

of guilt], the being counts as second-personally competent. (Darwall

2013c, p. 47)

Darwall immediately then claims (following Strawson) that

“second-personal competence is both necessary and sufficient

for moral obligation” (Darwall 2013c, p. 47).

Darwall’s account thus explains obligation’s special coercive

quality as deriving directly from the subject’s recognition of a

legitimate protest or claim (or an imagined protest or claim)

from a social-interactive (second-personal) partner. And the con-

nection to guilt follows directly from this: Individuals internalize a

second-personal interactant’s blame or protest (or anticipate such

MICHAEL TOMASELLO is professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at

Duke University and emeritus director at the Max Planck Institute

for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. His research

interests focus on processes of cooperation, communication, and cul-

tural learning in human children and great apes. He has been elected

to the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, Germany,

Hungary, and Sweden. His most recent books include A Natural

History of Human Thinking (Harvard University Press, 2014), A

Natural History of Human Morality (Harvard University Press,

2016), and Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny (Harvard

University Press 2019).

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blame or protest), and, to the degree that they find it warranted,

apply it to themselves. Individuals use this internalized process to

self-regulate their social behavior. The sense of obligation to an

interactive partner is thus not simple approval of the governing

societal rule (à la Hume), but rather it is the force and legitimacy

of the claim that a second- personal agent makes, or could make,

on me.

With respect to the special social structuring of the sense of

obligation, Darwall recognizes societal conventions as prototypi-

cal situations of obligation, but only if second-personal agents

are involved – and such conventions are not strictly necessary.

Thus, he posits both “directed obligations,” which concern what

one person owes to another as a result of their second-personal

statuses (e.g., even in the absence of conventions, they owe one

another respect and fair treatment), and “obligations period,”

which also rely on general normative principles of second-

personal agency but are not directed at particular others.

Despite the advance that such social-interactive accounts of

obligation represent – as compared with the older “spect ator”

accounts based on disinterested judgments of approval and

disapproval – they leave open many important questions from a

psychological point of view. Most important, they do not address

such basic social-psychological questions as the following:

1. Where do the reactive attitudes (such as resentment and

blame) come from, and why do human individuals (but not

other animals) care that others are blaming them or making

claims on them in the first place?

2. Where do second-personal agents come from, such that other

animals and young infants, for example, are not second-

personally competent?

3. When individuals accept a claim from another as legitimate or

warranted – by, for example, apologizing, justifying, making

excuses, or feeling guilty – in what does their understanding

of such legitimacy consist?

To answer these questions is to give a more secure psychological

foundation to Darwall’s and similar philosophical accounts of the

human sense of obligation.

2. A shared intentionality account

My central claim here is that the human sense of obligation is part

and parcel of humans’ ultra-cooperative nature. Evolutionarily,

it emanated from the process by which collaborative partners

assessed one another – and worried about being assessed –

for their cooperativeness. This occurred in a socio-ecological

context in which exclusion from collaboration meant death.

Ontogenetically, young children first feel a sense of obligation to

collaborative partners: they act more respectfully toward collabo-

rative partners than toward others in various ways; they show

resentment and protest when their collaborative partners treat

them badly; and they formulate excuses and justifications when

they treat their collaborative partners in objectionable ways. They

are acting in these special ways toward collaborative partners –

and not toward others – based not on societal rules or generalized

principles of second-personal agency, but rather on the normative

bonds that interdependent collaboration creates (at the same time

and through the same processes that it creates second-personal

agents; see below). I will argue, at the end of the article, that classic

tit-for-tat reciprocity does not create normative bonds of this kind

and so cannot account for humans’ sense of obligation.

What is crucial for a sense of obligation psychologically, in this

view, is a sense of shared agency, a sense that “we” are acting

together interdependently. We have put our fates in one another ’s

hands and so hold one another responsible for appropriate respect

and treatment. The ability to form shared agencies derives from

a uniquely human social psychology of shared intentionality,

as described by philosophers of action such as Bratman (1992;

2014), Gilbert (1990; 2014), and Searle (1995a; 2010), and as

applied empirically by psychologists such as Tomasello (2014a;

2016; 2019). In both phylogeny and ontogeny, this unique social

psychology unfolds in two key steps. The first concerns how indi-

viduals relate to one another in the context of collaboration: joint

intentionality, which creates a joint agent “we” and a dyadic,

second-personal morality between collaborative partners. The sec-

ond step concerns how individuals relate to their cultural group

more generally: collective intentionality, which creates a collective

agent “we” and a norm-b ased,

“objective” morality in the cultural

group. These two steps correspond, in a general way, to Darwall’s

distinction between directed oblig ation (to an individual) and

obligation period (to no individual in particular).

2.1. Joint intentionality and second-personal responsibility

In some groups of chimpanzees, individuals hunt monkeys

together in groups. But they do not call their partners out for

poor performance, or apologize or make excuses or feel guilty

for their own poor performance, or feel obligated to share the

spoils in a fair manner among participants. They are basically

using one another as social tools for their own individual ends

(Tomasello et al. 2005), and therefore do not seem to be operating

with a sense that they owe things to one another. But at some

point in human evolution, a new form of social engagement

emerged: collaborative interactions initiated by the joint agent

“we,” which self-regulated the individual partners “I” and “you”

(perspectivally defined). We may call this new form of collabora-

tive interaction the joint intentional schema, or dual-level collab-

oration (Tomasello 2014a; 2016; 2019). The essential point in the

current cont ext is that the joint intentional schema created the

possibility of a morality of fairness among co-equal second-

personal agents, who felt a sense of normative obligation to

treat one another in mutually respectful ways.

2.1.1. Evolutionary background

The specific chronology of how humans evolved their new forms

of collaborative interaction are not important for current pur-

poses. What is important is that at some point in human evolu-

tion the feeding ecology changed, and individuals were forced

to collaborate with others to obtain food or else perish. The skills

and motivations of good collaborators were thus naturally

selected. In this context, a key part of the process was partner

choice. Individuals were looking for the best partners, and of

course they had to be good partners themselves if they were to

be chosen (Baumard et al. 2013). Partner choice is thus funda-

mentally a process of social selection in which individuals are

both judger and judged, and the only ones who survive are

those who get good partners because those good partners evaluate

them positively. It is thus important that individuals have a kind

of cooperative identity in the eyes of collaborative partners and

themselves (“we”).

In addition to partner choice – in which individuals attempt to

identify and choose the best partners – early humans also engaged

in partner control in which individuals attempt to transform

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existing partners into better partners. In the evolutionary litera-

ture, the most common form of partner control is punishment

for non-cooperation (e.g., in meerkats’ so-called “pay to play”),

which hopefully makes individuals cooperate in better ways.

But early humans developed a unique form of partner control

that plays a key role in the way they relate to one another: They

protested against non-cooperative behavior, giving the non-

cooperator a chance to mend her ways voluntarily of her own

accord. If she did not, her cooperative identity with partners

would be damaged, and she could be hit with the ultimate

sanction of being partner-choiced out of existence.

The distinction between partner choice and partner control is

important in the current context because we might say that

whereas Hume focuses mainly on processes of partner choice,

in which individuals simply judge who does or does not have

the virtues of a good cooperative partner, Darwall focuses mainly

on processes of partner control, in which individuals demand that

their partner shape up (or else they will ship out). Partner control

within the context of human collaborative interaction – which I

will characterize below as a kind of “we” self-regulating each part-

ner “I” and “you”–may thus be seen as the evolutionary basis for

many of the most important participant reactive attitudes (and

how recipients respond to them). Partner choice is more of a uni-

lateral decision, whereas partner control – and so the sense of

obligation – is bilateral negotiation. Thus, for instance, ownership

is not just about how I relate to my iPhone, but rather about how

you and I relate to one another with respect to my iPhone. And

promising is not just about my behavior, but rather about how

you and I relate to one another with respect to my behavior.

This triadic structure – you and I relating to one another about

some external object or action – is the defining organization of

social activities structured by shared intentionality.

2.1.2. Ontogeny

Humans’ adaptations for interacting with others in these new

ways – culminating in a sense of fairness and obligation to treat

others coopera tiv ely (and to expect such treatment from others) –

comes into being gradually during ontogeny via a kind of matura-

tionally guided learning (Tomasello 2019). It begins to emerge

initially in young children from 1 to 3 years of age. Of crucial

importance for the current argument, this initial emergence

takes place mostly, or only, within joint intentional collaboration,

and can be seen in the species-unique ways in which human

children, in contrast to other apes, relate to their collaborative

partners. What we are looking for is the mutually respectful

behavior toward partners characteristic of second-personal agents

(à la Darwall), such things as persisting in commitments even

when one does not want to, dividing the spoils “fairly” even

when one does not want to, asking permission to break a commit-

ment, respectfully protesting a partner’s uncooperative behavior,

and justifying or making excuses for one’s own non-cooperative

behavior.

2.1.2.1. Joint goals and commitments. In terms of motivation, the

most basic comparative fact is that, in situations of free choice

with rewards for both partners identical, 3-year-old children

mostly choose to collaborate with a partner, whereas chimpanzees

mostly choose to go it alone (Rekers et al. 2011). Children are so

motivated to collaborate that they actively attempt to reengage a

recalcitrant partner, whereas chimpanzees ignore a recalcitrant

partner and, again, attempt to go it alone (Warneken et al.

2006). Indeed, children are so motivated that they attempt to

reengage a recalcitrant partner even when they know they could

act alone and reach the same result (Warneken et al. 2012).

Humans have a species-unique motivation and preference, at

least among great apes, for pursuing goals by collaborating with

others. But more than this preference, children also relate to one

another inside these collaborative activities in unique ways sug-

gestive of a sense of obligation to treat their partner respectfully

(as an equal).

Within joint intentional activities, children go to some pains to

make sure that their partner gets her just deserts. Thus, when two

3-year-olds are working together toward a joint goal, and, seem-

ingly by accident, one child has access to a reward first, they nev-

ertheless persist with the collaboration until the partner obtains a

reward as well. They do not do this nearly as often in a control

condition in which another child lacks a reward in the same

way but they are not collaborating (Hamann et al. 2012). In con-

trast, chimpanzees in the same two situations persist with their

partner at the same (low) rate whether they are collaborating or

not (Greenberg et al. 2010). Child ren’s deferential behavior to

partners within the collaborative condition of this study could

conceivably be interpreted simply as an enhanced motivation/

preference to help their partner. But it could also be interpreted

as collaborative activities generating a normative sense of respon-

sibility to the partner and the partner’s welfare.

Consistent with this latter interpretation, children at around 3

years of age begin to appreciate the normative force of joint com-

mitments to collaborate.

Thus, when adults propose a joint com-

mitment to two children (“Why don’ t you guys X together, OK?” )

and the children agree explicitly ( “OK”), this has huge conse-

quences in how they treat their partner. For example, after an

adult has orchestrated a joint commitment between 3-year-old

peers, if one of them is tempted away by a more rewarding

“bribe” that benefits only her, they quite often resist this bribe;

that is, they resist this bribe more often than if they are simply

playing side-by-side without the joint commitment (Kachel &

Tomasello 2019). In another experimental paradigm, when

3-year-old children form a joint commitment with a partner,

again as opposed to merely playing beside her, they more often

do such things as wait for the partner when she is delayed, repair

some damage done by the partner, refrain from tattling on the

partner, and perform the partner’s role for her when she is unable

(Gräfenhain et al. 2013). Although again possible, it is more dif-

ficult to interpret all of these behaviors as resulting simply from

an enha nced prosocial motivation toward the other child; why

should simply agreeing to do something together have these var-

ious effects if not because it creates some sense of responsibility to

one’s partner?

In further support of the view that children understand joint

commitments to have normative force (and not just to enhance

motivation), when a child’s partner fails to play his role in a

joint commitment in the way they both know he should, the

child protests (but not if the partner fails out of ignorance;

Kachel et al. 2018). It seems implausible that children are protest-

ing that the other child has not enhanced his prosocial motiva-

tion. Much more likely is that they are protesting the breaking

of a joint commitment. And, crucially, the child’s protest in

such situations is not articulated as a personal preference or desire

(e.g., “I do not like it when you X”), but rather as a normative

requirement of anyone who would play that role, with the child

saying such normative things as: “One must pull on the rope,”

“That’s not how it is done,” and so on. Thus, beyond the likes

and dislikes of the individuals involved, there are for the children

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normative standards of how collaborative partners play their roles,

which apply to anyone in the appropriate role. Connecting back

to the previously cited studies, if young children se e their collab-

orative partners as normatively committed to them in this way in

such situations, then it is likely that their resisting bribes to defect

on their partner, and similar behaviors, are underlain by a similar

sense of being normatively committed to their partner as well (see

also Siposova et al. 2018).

Finally, perhaps the strongest evidence that young children

understand joint commitments as normatively binding comes

from their understanding of how to break one. Thus, when an

adult proposes a joint commitment to a 3-year-old to play a

game together (which the ch ild explicitly accepts), and the child

is lured away to a more fun game, most of them acknowledge

in some way their breaking of the commitment (in a way that

2-year-olds do not). They “take leave,” sometimes by explicitly

asking permission (e.g., “I’ll go over there now, OK?”), sometimes

by apologizing (e.g., “Sorry, but I’m going over there now”), some-

times by simply announcing their departure (e.g., “I’m goin g over

there now”), and sometimes nonverbally by hesitating and look-

ing anxiously to the partner before leaving. They do not do any

of these things if they are just playing with the adult spontane-

ously, in the absence of a joint commitment, and then are lured

away (Gräfenhain et al. 2009). And in another experimental par-

adigm, when the child’s partner to a joint commitment breaks it

by leaving, it matters how he takes leave. If he asks permission or

gives notice, the child allows him to leave without protest and

waits longer for him to return, as compared to the situation in

which he leaves peremptorily without asking permission or giving

notice (Kachel et al. 2019). These studies thus support the conclu-

sion that 3-year-old children understand the normative force of

joint commitments with respect to both their own and their part-

ner’s actions, based on behaviors such as leave-taking and norma-

tive protest that do not emanate simply from an enha nced

preference.

The natural conclusion from all of these studies is that young

children feel some kind of normative connection to their collab-

orative partner that they do not feel toward others outside of col-

laboration. It is thus collaboration among individuals, not societal

convention, that is the first and most natural home of the sense of

obligation (or responsibility; see below) directed to one’s partner.

2.1.2.2. Sharing the spoils “fairly ”. If an ape has food resources in

its possession, it very seldom gives up any of them to anyone else –

and certainly not for no reason. Young children are a bit more

generous, but not much; on average, in dictator games where they

are free to share what they will, 3-year-olds across cultures offer

peers about one in four items in their possession (Ibbotson 2014).

But when the resources to be divided are the fruits of a collab-

orative effort, we see a very different pattern. When chimpanzees

pull in a board together with food clumped in the middle, typi-

cally the domina nt individual simply takes it all, and collaboration

breaks down over trials (Melis et al. 2006). In contrast, human

3-year-olds in the same situation divide the spoils more or less

equally on more or less every trial, and they can continue to col-

laborate in this manner indefinitely (Warneken et al. 2011). Most

dramatically, when 3-year-old peers collaborate to pull in

resources and, by “luck,” one of them ends up with more than

the other, the unlucky child often verbally notes the inequity

(e.g., “I only have one”), and the lucky child often (about three-

quarters of the time) hands over the extras so as to equalize the

rewards among partners (Hamann et al. 2011). They almost

never do this in a control condition with no collaboration, sug-

gesting that the sense of shared agency in producing the rewards

is crucial. In contrast, chimpanzees, in a study designed to be as

similar as possible to this one, shared rewards (i.e., allowed the

partner to take them) equally often inside and outside the context

of a collaboration, presumably because they have no sense of

shared agency in producing the spoils. In a related set of studies,

children who received all of the rewards from pulling in a board

with sweets on it shared those sweets more often with a collabo-

rative partner than with a peer who was simply nearby (i.e., was a

free ride r to the spoils; Melis et al. 2015). Chimpanzees in the

same experimental situation shared equally infrequently with

partners and free riders alike (Melis et al. 2011).

Thus, in the context of joint intentional collaboration but not

in non-collaborative contexts, children, but not chimpanzees, are

motivated to share equally with, and only with, their partner. This

is not just enhanced generosity to one’s collaborative partner: In

the Hamann et al. (2011) study, children did not give the collab-

orative partner more than half but only the amount needed to

equalize the rewards. Indeed, when motives for generosity and

equality are explicitly pitted against one another in this experi-

mental paradigm, children who have been in a collaboration do

not accept distributions that are generous either to their partner

or themselves, but accept distributions readily only when the

rewards are distributed equally (Corbit et al. 2017) – and they

do not behave in this way outside of collaboration. Joint inten-

tional collaboration does not just generate an enhanced generosity

toward one’s partner, but rather an enhanced normative sense

that “we” should share “fairly” (i.e., equally).

Of crucial importance to this normative interpretation is the

phenomenon of social comparison in distributive situations.

The main point is that the sense of distributive fairness toward

a collaborative partner implies a social comparison of the spoils

obtained by self and partner and, critically, a judgment that we

both deserve the same. This suggests that the sense of fairness is

less about the absolute amount of resources distributed than

about how one treats one’s partner relative to the self

(Engelmann & Tomasello 2019). Thus, when children receive,

for example, one piece of candy, they are content, but when a col-

laborative partner at the same time receives five pieces of candy,

they are not content and often register normative protest (e.g.,

“It’s not fair.” See Rakoczy et al. 2016). Importantly, children

feel this aversion to inequity also in the opposite direction: they

are happy to receive five candies on their own, but they are

unhappy if their partner at the same time receives only one,

and indeed in this case they often share with the partner in

order to equalize (in the vernacular, they show an aversion even

to advantageous inequity). In contrast, in virtually identical situ-

ations, chimpanzees react to the absolute amount they receive

irrespective of how much the partner receives; they do not engage

in social comparison at all (see Ulber & Tomasello 2017 for a

comparative study of children and chimpanzees).

Further supporting this view of distributive fairness as an issue

of equal respect for one’s partner is the phenomenon of proce-

dural fairness (Shaw & Olson 2014). In a small group of children,

5-year-olds do not like to receive a smaller share of the spoils than

their partners. But if the children agree ahead of time on a fair

procedure for di stributing resources (rolling a die, drawing straws,

etc.), then they are all content with the outcome even if they end

up with less than the others (Grocke et al. 2015). The point is not

to get the same amount but to be treated fairly, as an equal.

Children are also content to receive less than others if they have

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been given a voice in making the distributive decision (Grocke

et al. 2018), again suggesting that the main issue is being treated

fairly and with respect. And in a mini-ultimatum game, 5-year-

old children will even sacrifice resources to punish a partner who

does not share with them equally (Wittig et al. 2013) – presum-

ably out of resentment for being treated as less than equal (i.e.,

unfairly) – which chimpanzees do not do (Jensen et al. 2007).

The natural conclusion from these sharing studies is that

young children feel a kind of normative force to share fairly

with collaborative partners that they do not feel toward non-

partners (whereas chimpanzees do not discriminate). They feel

they should treat their partner, and be treated by their partner,

as equally deserving, which is also the case in situations of proce-

dural fairness even if the resources end up unequal. Again, then, it

is joint intentiona l collaboration that is the first and most natural

home of a sense of obligation (or responsibility; see below)

directed to one’s partner: in this case, to be respectful and fair

to one’s partner in dividing collaboratively produced resources.

2.1.3. An interim explanation

It is unlikely that the explanation for these experimental results is

that collaboration induces an enhanced sympathy for the partner.

Enhanced sympathy could potentially explain why children per-

sist in collaboration in the face of outside temptations only after

they have made a joint commitment but not otherwise, and

why they share more with their partner when they are dividing

the spoi ls of collaboration than otherwise. But enhanced sympa-

thy alone could not, under any plausible scenario, generate child-

ren’s tendency to share equally with their partner only inside, and

not outside, of collaborative activities, much less their satisfaction

with procedural fairness. It could also not explain children’s nor-

mative protest against unfair treatment – either when the partner

defects from the collaboration or shares the spoils unfairly – using

normative language such as must, should, and ought, nor could it

explain children’s various leave-taking behaviors (including apol-

ogies and excuses) when they are breaking a commitment. The

most plausible explanation is that children are feeling some sort

of obligation or responsibility to treat their partner respectfully

and fairly.

I will give an overall explanation for the developmental emer-

gence of children’s sense of obligation only after having examined

older children’s sense of collective agency and “objective” moral-

ity. For now, I simply wish to highlight the indispensable role of

the joint agent “we,” which not only conducts but also self-

regulates the collaboration. Even 18-month-old toddlers seem to

have formed a joint agent “we” with their partner, as evidenced

by the fact that they attempt to reengage recalcitrant partners

even when they do not need them for goal success, using cooper-

ative means such as beckoning and encouragement (which apes

do not do; Warneken et al. 2006; 2012). These communicative

behaviors may be seen as attempts by the child to reconstitute

our lost “we.” And by the time they are 3 years of age, children

are able to actually constitute a normatively structured joint

agent “we” by forming with a partner a joint commitment to

jointly self-regulate the collaborative process, in the sense that it

gives each party to the agreement the standing to protest or

rebuke non-cooperative behavior. Darwall (2006) characterizes

the basis for such protest as the parties to the agreement giving

one another the “representative authority” of the cooperating

body (“we”) to call the other out for non-cooperative behavior.

And when children protest a partner’s non-cooperative behavior,

the offending partner typically recognizes and accedes to this

protest because she views it as legitimate or warranted, based

on their statu s as equally deserving second-personal agents who

have thrown in together to form a self-regulating “we.”

Taking the protest of collaborative partners seriously, as a

legitimate grievance from “we,” amounts to self-regulative pres-

sure from “we.” The fact that 3-year-old children do in fact feel

this way when they offend their partner , at least sometimes, is

apparent in their feelings of guilt when they let their partner

down. In experimental studies, after children have semi-

inadvertently ruined their play partner’s creation, they go to

much trouble to make reparations (Vaish et al. 2016). Guilt

thus represents a kind of after-the-fact collaborative self-

regulation, as it also constitutes pressure from “we” (our

common-ground standards for role performance) on both “I”

and “you”: what Tomasello (2016) has called a we > me moral

attitude. More generally, what is being self-regulated either during

or after the collaboration is my cooperative identity: how “we”

evaluate “me” as a partner.

Key in all of this is the notion of role that joint intentional col-

laboration creates. In collaborative activities performed by a “we,”

partners each have their role to play. As both play their roles, they

come to see one another as equally deserving individuals, equally

worthy of respect. This recognition is based on a dawning under-

standing of self-other equivalence (Nagel 1970b): I and my part-

ner are equivalent in all important respects in this collaborative

context. Most basically, as children participate in joint intentional

collaboration, they see that: (1) both participants are equal causal

forces in producing the mutually intended outcome; (2) both

partners could switch roles as needed; and, most crucially, (3)

the standards of performance for each role (so-called “role ideals,”

the first social shared normative standards) are impartial in the

sense that they apply to anyone in that role. By the time they

are 3 years of age, children thus come to understand a kind of

self-other equivalence in the context of joint intentional collabo-

ration to the extent that they now view their partner as a mutually

deserving second-personal agent to whom they owe respect and

fairness.

And so, the interim hypothesis is that parti cipation in joint

intentional collaboration, especially as initiated by a joint commit-

ment, is the earliest source of children’s (and early humans’) feel-

ing of obligation to their partner. Critical to the process is the

child’s judgment that she deserves to be criticized if she does

not live up to the joint commitment. This judgment of legitimacy

is based on (1) an understanding of the partner as an equally

deserving second-personal agent who deserves to be treated coop-

eratively (based on a sense of self-other equivalence); and (2) an

understanding of a kind of we > me self-regulation of the collab-

orative activity in which the “we” is the joint agency to which the

child has jointly committed and which she must, to maintain her

cooperative identity in the partnership, respect. Nevertheless,

because this early normative sense is delimited – directed to

and only to a collaborative partner – let us call it a sense of

second-personal responsibility directed to the partner (as alluded

to above). To get to Darwall’s sense of obligation period – not

directed to any particular individual – we will need to get to a full-

fledged “objective” morality, and for that we need a more expan-

sive form of cooperative social engagement.

2.2. Collective intentionality and “objective” obligation

Second-personal responsibility to a collaborative partner is a real,

but nevertheless circumscribed, form of normative obligation. To

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get to a more universal form, we need a larger social context with

universalizing elements. Specifically, we need a human culture

with which individuals identify: “we” Erewhonians (or whatever).

Ontogenetically, it is only children after 3 years of age who iden-

tify with their culture in this manner and so not only favor

in-group members over others, but also subordinate their own

preferences to the cultural group’s collective expectations for indi-

vidual behavior, also known as social norms, some of which evoke

a sense of obligation to “objective” moral standards (violation of

which can result in one losing one’s moral identity within the

group).

The most fundamental assumption guiding this second step of

our account is that a cultural group – that is, evolutionarily, a

hunter-gatherer group with clear demographic boundaries as

characteristic of humans for most of their history – is nothing

more or less than one big collaborative activity in which “we”

as a people operate with a collective commitment to the group’s

surviving and thriving. Each individual has her role(s) to play

in this collective commitment – both as a member of the group

in general and, possibly, as a person playing some more specific

division-of-labor role – and this generates, in a scaled-up manner,

more universal normative expectations. Extending the proposal

that commitment and fairness accompanied by a sense of obliga-

tion first apply to, and only to, collaborative partners, the pro-

posal now is that the sense of oblig ation at this second step

applies to, and only to, one’s cultural compatriots. One may

have sympathy for suffering out-group members, but it is not

clear that one has obligations to be fair to them (unless one has

an expanded sense of all of humanity as in one’s in-group

moral community).

2.2.1. Evolutionary background

The emergence of modern humans, some 150,000 years ago, is

marked by growth in the size of social groups, leading eventually

to tribal organization – involving multiple semi-independent

“bands,” united into a larger tribe – and to competition with

other tribal groups. What this meant was that one’s group now

contained a new category of individuals – in-group strangers –

who had to be distinguished from out-group competitors. For

individuals, this meant that it was important to identify who

was and was not in the tribal group, and it was important that

they themselves be identified by others as a member of the tribal

group (read: culture) as well. To be identified as a group member,

what was most important was conformity, since the most reliable

way to identify members of the cultural group was by common-

alities of behavior – speech and other conventional cultural prac-

tices – and, at some point, by appearance in terms of dress,

cultural markers, and so on. Nonconformists were suspect and

at risk of being excluded from the group – a scaled-up process

of partner choice.

But there were also issue s of partner control. One needed to be

able to coordinate with all and only in-group members, even if

one did not know them personally. For example, anyone who

grew up in this group must know how to net-fish or worship

with others in the conventional way. There was thus pressure to

conform to the group’s conventional cultural practices as the

way we Erewhonians do things (where doing otherwise risks dis-

rupting things for one’s compatriots). And so arose social norms:

Because we all value the group’s smooth functioning, we all must

do things in the ways that we all expect us to do them. In addition,

to be a good group member, we must also make sure that others

follow these norms as well (especially by normatively protesting

violations). The enforcement of social norms is thus a kind of

scaled-up, third-party version of the second-personal protest

characteristic of joint intentional collaboration: It is a new, group-

level form of partner control comprising group-level protest

backed by a threat of exclusion (partner choice). When individu-

als deviate, other group members call them out for nonconfor-

mity, with the enforcer acting as a kind of representative of the

larger cultural “we.” Third-party enforcement on nonconformists,

with the implicit backing of the group, makes everything much

less personal: Anyone who did what you did would be called

out for it. It thus represents a first step toward the objectification

of norms.

Cultural practices and social norms in large part identify our

group as who we are: “We” are those people who talk, think,

dress, and eat in these particular ways. Being a member of the

group means identifying with these ways (begun by our revered

ancestors), such that the group com prises not a finite number

of individuals but a universalizing description of identity: “anyone

who would be one of us.” Even though the group’s social norms

existed before I was born, I feel myself to be, in an important

sense, a co-author: “We” Erewhonians created these norms for

the good of the group and everyone who would be one of us

agrees. This creates the most basic – and sometimes pernicious

– distinction in humans’ group-minded existence: the distinction

between those of us who, by following and enforcing the practices

and beliefs of our culture, are rational/moral beings, and those

from alien groups (barbar ians) who are not rational/moral beings

at all. This universalization of identity legitimates our ways of

thinking and acting as objectively rational and moral (especially

since those who would not be one of us seem to be incapable

of behaving rationall y and morally). “We” are therefore justified

or warranted in coming down on “me” if I transgress, since all

group members, including me, should be subject to these norm s

because they are the legitimate, indeed objectively true and

valid, ways that rational/moral beings act.

In this context, a kind of new reality emerges: institutional

reality (Searle 1995a). Some cultural practices become institution-

alized, as the common-ground assumptions and interdependen-

cies involved are made explicit and public. Thus, mating

behavior becomes marriage, leaders become chiefs, and items

used to establish equivalences in trade become money. This pro-

cess brings into existence new types of agents with new types of

deontic relationships to others (both rights and responsibilities)

that are conferred upon them, as it were, by a declaration of the

group. Chiefs have conferred upon them a new status that entitles

them to perform marriages and declare war, but at the same time

obliges them to consult with the elders before acting. Membership

in the cultural group itself becomes a status: Those who identify

with the group – by affirming and conforming to its ways – are

recognized as group members, often after passing some “rites of

passage” around the time of adolescence. This cultural identity

is something valuable to individuals, who seek to maintain it

(e.g., via acts of impression management).

In this cultural-institutional context, then, individuals con-

tinue to self-regulate in a we > me manner, but now the “we” is

our culture – that is, those who would be one of us – and each

of us must conform to the group’s “objective” normative stan-

dards specifying the right and wrong ways to think and act. In

this cultural-institutional context, individuals with a moral iden-

tity in the group feel an obligation to either conform to the

group’s ways or else to justify themselves to others by explaining

their deviance as resulting from values that we all still share (e.g., I

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neglected my cultural duties because I had to go save my drown-

ing child, which we all agree was the right thing to do).

Individuals thus feel that to maintain their cultural identity in

the group, they are obliged to do (or justify not doing) the “objec-

tively” right things, which are experienced (in Darwall’s terms) as

obligations period.

2.2.2. Ontogeny

Humans are thus adapted not just for cooperation with individu-

als, but also for life in a cultural group. These adaptations for

group life begin to emerge ontogenetically at around the third

birthday, as children begin to display an emerging group-

mindedness and sense of “objectivity” in many domains of life

(Tomasello 2018; 2019). Of special importance in the current

context, it is at this age that children’s cooperative interactions

with others begin to take a “normative turn”: they begin to discern

how “we” in this group should act, that is, how a collective com-

mitment to the group – created through identification with the

group and its social norms – obligates us to act. As development

proceeds through the preschool years, children’s emerging group-

mindedness enables them to engage in various new forms of

maturationally guided learning, in which the group and its nor-

mative concerns play an ever-increasing role.

2.2.2.1. Group-mindedness. Human children socially interact with

others from early in infancy, sometimes even in the midst of mul-

tiple other people. But from 3 to 5 years of age, children begin to

understand social groups as such. Astoundingly, during this age

range children’s social behavior is even affected in significant

ways by simply being assigned to a “minimal group” established

only verbally and with arbitrary supports – for example, as they

don a green T-shirt and are told that they belong to the green

group (along with other similarly clad children; Dunham 2018).

The result is that children’s sense of being in a group is not

based simply on physical proximity and/or familiarity (as it is,

arguably, in other primates), but rather on the idea of a social

group based on similarity alone.

Thus, 4- to 5-year-old children who have been assigned to a

minimal group show loyalty by preferring to stick with the

group even when it means losing rather than winning a game

(Misch et al. 2014). Preschool children preferentially help

in-group over out-group members (Over 2018). When a member

of a 5-year-old’s minimally established in-group does something

mean to a victim, she feels an in-group responsibility to make

amends to that victim – whereas she does not feel a responsibility

if the perpetrator was an out-group member (Over et al. 2016).

When children in this age range are given a chance to share

with children in their in-group, they do so relatively generously,

whereas they do not do so with children from an out-g roup

(Fehr et al. 2008). In general, preschool children begin to show

an understanding of the group as a kind of collective agency, as

they judge that being a member of a task group means both

that the individual wants to be a member and that the group

wants her to be a member as well (Noyes & Dunham 2017).

And, critically, even children’s basic sense of social identity is

group-minded, as (1) they care more about their individual repu-

tations with in-group than with out-group members (Engelmann

et al. 2013); and (2) they engage in active attempts to manage

other people’s evaluative judgments not just of themselves but

of their in-group as such (Engelmann et al. 2018

These findings and others like them (for reviews, see Dunham

2018; Dunham et al. 2008) establish that children after 3 years of

age are tuning in to the group-level organization within which

they live, and, arguably, this underlies their newfound under-

standing of and relating to things in an objective and/or norma-

tive manner: This is how things are (for “us”) and this is how

things are done (by “us”). Note that, in this view, in-group favor-

itism (and out-group disfavoritism) is basically a scaled-up ver-

sion of children’s tendency to favor collaborative partners over

non-collaborators (i.e., free riders).

2.2.2.2. Social norms. A basic requirement of membership in a

cultural group is conformity, including to its social norms.

From early in development young children imitate the actions

of others, but by 3 years of age they are actually conforming to

the group by overriding their own individual preferences to do

what others are doing (which other apes do not do; Haun &

Over 2014; Haun & Tomasello 2011). This conformity often

takes on a kind of objectifying or normative quality. For example,

3-year-old children engage in so-called overimitation, in which

they copy aspects of adult behavior that are clearly not related

to goal attainment (Lyons et al. 2007). One inte rpretation of

this behavior is that when children see an adult performing an

instrumental action with extra unnecessary flourishes, they do

not interpret this as an individual idiosyncrasy of the actor, but

rather as a manifestation of “how it is done” in the culture

(Keupp et al. 2013).

An especially important indicator of preschoolers’ emerging

understanding of the group-mindedness of social norms is their

proclivity not just to conform to them but to enforce them on

others. From around 3 years of age, when children detect a social

norm or rule violation, they protest, often normatively (Rakoczy

et al. 2008; Schmidt et al. 2011; 2016a; for a review, see

Schmidt & Tomasello 2012). They presumably are motivated by

something like a concern for how things are going in the group

in general, as indicated by their use of normative language. This

normative language takes one of two forms: (1) an expression

that this is how “one” should do it; or (2) an even more objecti-

fying expression that “this is how it is done” (Koymen et al. 2015).

This language makes it clear that children are not just expressing

their personal preference or desire, but rather they are referencing

the group’s normative standards that apply to all group members

alike. Interestingly, when adults teach children about the world (in

natural pedagogy; Csibra & Gergely 2009), this same generic, uni-

versalizing mode operates (e.g., “To open these kinds of things,

you must twist them like this ”), and so children take the pedagogy

to apply not just to the items indicated but generically to all

kind-relevant agents and actions (Butler & Markman 2014;

Butler & Tomasello 2016 ). The protesting child is, as it were, rep-

resenting the group and its interests.

Importantly, recent research has found that preschool children

also understand the group-relativity of some types of social

norms. That is, specifically, when a perpetrator breaks a conven-

tional norm, children enforce the norm if and only if the actor is

an in-group member, since in-group members are within the pur-

view of the norm and should know better (whereas out-group

members are not; Schmidt et al. 2012). But when a perpetrator

breaks a moral norm – specifically, by harming an in-group mem-

ber – these same children enforce the norm on both in- and out-

group individuals alike. Presumably, this differentiation of norm

types (see also Turiel 2007) reflects children’s understanding

that breaking moral norms represents a threat to the well-being

of the group, whereas conventional norms are just how those

who identify with the group behave to coordinate and self-

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identify. Interestingly, when children explain to an in-group peer

the reasons for a third-party’s norm violation, they explain a con-

ventional violation by attempting to justify the rule, but they

explain a moral violation by simply stating the offense, assuming

that it is clear that it violates a value that “we” all already share as

members of the group (Mamman et al. 2018).

Finally, by around 5 years of age, children in small groups can

create novel social norms for themselves by agreement (i.e., in the

context of a novel game; Göckeritz et al. 2014; Hardecker et al.

2017). Having created a norm, when new children come to play

with the same materials, the creators enforce these self-invented

rules on the new children normatively (e.g., “You have to play

it this way”). And when someone agrees to a norm but then

breaks it, children protest normatively, whereas when someone

who has not agreed to the norm does exactly the same thing

they do not protest (Schmidt et al. 2016b). The ways that young

children understand and deal with the norms that they have cre-

ated themselves – simply on the basis of agreement with peers

with no authority figure involved – suggests an emerging under-

standing that the agreements that constitute social norms produce

individual rights and obligations. Such collective agreements or

commitments may be seen as scaled-up versions of the joint com-

mitments characteristic of joint intentional collaboration at the

first step of our account.

2.2.2.3. Obligation. Together, these various lines of research sug-

gest that young children’s developing sense of belonging to a cul-

tural group and their developing sense of morality, including a

sense of obligation, are all of a piece. Children are loyal to the

in-group, they feel guilty and make amends for the acts of the

in-group, they share fairly with the in-group, they conform to

the in-group, they enforce conventional norms especially on the

in-group, and they care more about their reputation with the

in-group (and the in-group’s reputation itself) – as opposed to

their general lack of interest in any out-group. In-group members

thus constitute the child’s sociomoral world, and others are sim-

ply outside that world. And so children make “objective” norma-

tive judgments about how things should be done, with the

reference group being the members of the sociomoral world

that they inhabit. They are objective about their known worlds.

Later, school-age children come to understand that there may

be other sociomoral worlds with their own norms (Schmidt

et al. 2017).

With regard to the understanding of obligations specifically,

preschool children appear to believe that members of social

groups have obligations to one another that they do not have to

out-group members. For example, Rhodes (2012) introduced 3-

to 4-year-old children to two novel groups of characters ( flurps

and zazes). She then asked them to predict each group’s behavior

both toward in-group and out-group members. The children

expected the in-group members not to harm one another

(whereas it was less bad for them to harm out-group members),

the authors’ interpretation being that children judge in-group

members as having an obligation not to harm one another,

which they do not have to outsiders. As a kind of control obser-

vation, children did not have different expectations for within and

between group behaviors with regard to helping. So it is not just

that they think individuals are “nicer” to in-group members, but

that it is specifically about their being obliged to treat in-group

members in special ways. Related studies have found similar

results when children are asked to explain (rather than predict)

the behavior of individual flurps and zazes toward in-group and

out-group members (e.g., Chalik & Rhodes 2015; Rhodes 2014;

Rhodes & Chalik 2013). In a review, Rhodes and Wellman

(2017, p. 195) state:

On this account, it is only those behaviors that children construe as oblig-

atory that are shaped by their representations of social groups. Thus, chil-

dren view people as obligated not to harm members of their own group,

and because this is about an obligation, they do not extend this notion

across group boundaries. In contrast, they fail to – at least at early ages –

view pro-social actions as falling under the same scope of obligation,

and thus, do not make group-based predictions about these types of

behavior.

The hypothesis is thus that preschool children are beginning to do

the same thing at this second step in our account, with regard to

groups, that they were doing at the first step, with regard to col-

laborative partners. Namely, they are judging that obligations

apply to those with whom they can and do form a “we,” either

within a collaborative partnership or within a cultural group.

The fact that these same children do not expect in-group mem-

bers to help one another more than out-group members provides

a kind of control observation that it is not just more positive feel-

ings toward in-group members; it is about obligation specifically

or especially. As development proceeds, children’s understanding

of “objective” standards that should apply universally to all ratio-

nal/moral beings persists; it is just that, for some individuals at

least, their understanding of who is included in the class of ratio-

nal/moral beings widens and relativizes.

2.2.2.4. Cross-cultural variation. Recent research has begun to

explore cross-cultural differences in the development of children’s

cooperation and morality. The overall pattern with respect to pro-

social sharing, for example, is that children are quite similar at

younger ages, and then during middle childhood (roughly, early

school-age), their behavior begins to diverge based on the differ-

ent social norms of the different cultural groups to whic h they

belong (House et al. 2012; 2013; House & Tomasello 2018). As

another example, Schaefer et al. (2015) found that 4- to

11-year-old children from three different cultural groups (one

WEIRD – Wes tern, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic –

and two small-scale African cultures) took into account work-

based merit (i.e., based on who produces the most resources) in

culturally specific ways (some giving it more weight than others)

when deciding how to divvy up collaboratively acquired resources.

And Kanngeisser et al. (2019) found that while children from sev-

eral very different cultural contexts all respected the property of

others, there was at the same time cultural variation in how

much they did so.

These cross-cultural differences are consistent with the current

ontogenetic account because they concern children only at our

second, group-minded step as they gradually tune into and

learn the particular social norms of their particular culture (lead-

ing to such things as “guilt cultures” vs. “shame cultures”). If stud-

ies were conducted that found cultural differences in children’s

moral actions and judgments prior to 3 years of age, those

would call into question the current ontogenetic story. However,

there is very little cross-cultural data on children this young, as

in many small-scale cultures, toddlers are notoriously shy with

adults of all kinds. In any case, the current ontogenetic account

cannot be considered to be a universally valid account of the

human species so long as the only children for whom we have

rich data across ontogeny are from WEIRD cultures.

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2.2.3. A second interim explanation

In the case of joint intentionality and second-personal responsi-

bility, our developmental explanation was about the most basic

foundations of human morality: namely, how, through joint

intentional collaboration, young children: (1) construct a sense

of self-other equivalence, leading to the judgment that their part-

ner is an equally deserving individual worthy of equal respect; and

(2) self-regulate the collaboration with their partner collabora-

tively (as a joint agent), leading to a kind of we > me valuation,

creating for both partners the possibility of second-personal pro-

test that both see as legitimate since they both affirmed it initially

as part of their we-constituting joint commitment. The internal-

ization of this dynamic constitutes the individua l’s feeling of

second-personal responsibility to their collaborative partner

(and not to non-collaborating outsiders). Then, in the second

step of our account, 3- to 5-year-old children develop another

way of relating to others cooperatively – namely, they begin to

have a sense of themselves as members of the cultural group

with which they identify. That is, they have developed a second

sense of “we,” applying not just to their partner of the moment,

but also to their cultural group. Tomasello (2019) argues that

there is very likely a strong evolutionary/maturational component

to the emergence of this new group-minded form of social cogni-

tion at around 3 years of age.

In joint intentional activities, young children learn role ideals

and standards which they strive to live up to. In a cultural

group, although there are many specific cultural roles, the basic

role is as a group member, which implies ideals and standards

that individuals must live up to in order to have the status of

members of the group in good standing. And just as in joint

intentional collaboration there is collaborative self-regulation, in

cultural groups there is a kind of group-level self-regulation via

social norms. The crucial question is why the child buys into

these social norms, which she had no part in creating, as legiti-

mate. One possibility – noted above – is that the child identifies

with her cultural group; she values being seen by others, and see-

ing herself, as an Erewhonian (or whatever), constituted by those

of us, going back to our ancestors, who have certain distinctive

ways of doing things. The child, in a sense, comes to consider her-

self a kind of co-author of the social norms (analogous to her

co-authorship of a joint commitment): “We” Erewhonians created

these social norms.

This moral identity view fits very well with the analysis of

Korsgaard (1996), who proposes that “an obligation always

takes the form of a reaction against the threat of a loss of identity”

(p. 102). Indeed, one can imagine that this threat to self contrib-

utes to the sense of “objectivity” that goes along with a mature

sense of obligation: I am obliged to conform and to identify

with those around me or else I really and truly, objectively, will

cease to be who I am in the group. The social reference point

for universal obligations is thus not actual human beings, however

numerous, but the universalization of “anyone who would be one

of us.” Although this takes place within the cultural group, the

psychology is still a universalizing psychology because in the

ancestral state early humans thought of themselves and their com-

patriots as the only true persons, with outsiders being barbarians.

This means that the mature sense of obligation is tied to shared

agency even in this case. Thus, we may ask about our obligation

to (as opposed to our sympathy for) individuals from outside

our moral community. Do we have obligations to invading

Martians? We may feel sympathy for them in some situations,

but do we feel a sense of obligation to them? If we fail to cooperate

with them, do we owe them an apology or excuse? And what

about other animals? Some peo ple include them in the moral

community and feel that we have obligations to them, but if we

fail to cooperate with an animal, do we owe it an apology or

excuse? The point is that the sense of obligation (in contrast to

the sense of sympathy) only operates within one’s moral commu-

nity, which is best thought of, in evolutionary perspect ive, as a

kind of collective agency (which different cultural groups may

construct for themselves somewhat differently).

Throughout this whole process, the role ideals and standards

that individuals strive to meet must be viewed as legitimate, as

warranted, or else meeting these ideals and standards is simply

strategic. And so, when children follow the ways of the cultural

group, they are not just conforming strategically; and indeed,

they do not conform to the behavior of peers when that behavior

does not accord with their own understanding of who they are as

moral beings in the culture. For example, when a 5-year-old child

observes three other children being callous to a needy peer, many

of them do not follow along but behave prosocially in a way that

confirms their own moral identity (Engelmann et al. 2016).

Further, when children do not meet the group’s normative ideals

or standards, they do not always try to cover up (though they may

on occasion), but rather they feel guilty and attempt to make rep-

arations (Vaish et al. 2016). Guilt, as opposed to embarrassment

or shame or regret, derives precisely from the fact that one

knows one deserves the censure from the point of view of “we”

in the group. The internalization of this social-interactive process

is what creates the human sense of obligation – with a kind of uni-

versal, “objective” application – which derives its special force

from its self-affirmed legitimacy rooted in one’s sociomoral

identity.

3. Obligation as collaborative self-regulation

Some evolutionary theorists (e.g., de Waal 2006) have proposed

that tit-for-tat reciprocity between individuals – you scratch my

back and I’ll scratch yours – is the ultimate source of the

human sense of fairness or justice (and so, presumably, obliga-

tion). But while cooperative acts may engender a sense of grati-

tude, and so motivate a return cooperative act, it is difficult to

see how this process could engender a sense of obligation – unless,

of course, the initial cooperator feels that his cooperative act gives

him a claim on the recipient, and the recipient feels the force of

this claim in the sense of its moral legitimacy. In the current

view, a sense of legitimacy can only arise if the two of them feel

that they are interdependent parts of some larger social partner-

ship or group (“we

”) that is regulating the interaction.

Interestingly, when young children practice reciprocity in the

sharing of resources (e.g., Warneken & Tomasello 2013), they typ-

ically do not apologize, justify, or make excuses if they do not

reciprocate – they do not self-regulate the interaction morally –

suggesting that they are motivated by something more like

gratitude than obligation specifically. Thus, although tit-for-tat

reciprocity can, if the partners think of themselves as an interde-

pendent “we,” play a role in generating obligations, it is neither

necessary nor fundamental.

The social exchange theory of Cosmides and Tooby (2004)

locates the origin of humans’ sense of obligation in the evolution-

ary psychology of humans trading of goods with one another.

Their theory goes beyond simple tit-for-tat reciprocity in positing

an agreement-like structure that underlies obligations between

partners (“the obligation schema”). But the theory does not

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explore in any depth the origin of a sense of obligation, in that it

does not seek to identify the psychological components out of

which it is built either phylogenetically or ontogenetically. Why

does social exchange generate obligations in the first place? Our

interpretation, again, similar to that for simple reciprocity, is

that social exchange creates obligations precisely to the extent

that the parties to the exchange see it as a cooperative agreement

that “we” have created and that “we” cooperatively self-regulate

(e.g., by protest, justification, and apology).

In contrast, in our shared intentionality hypothesis we have

focused on where the sense of obligation comes from phylogenet-

ically and ontogenetically, namely, from the form ation of shared

agencies in collaboration and culture. In support of the hypothesis

we have presented evidence that children approaching their third

birthdays treat collaborative partners, as opposed to others, espe-

cially respectfully. They honor their joint commitments, ask per-

mission of their partner to break them, respect protest against

breaches, and provide a respectful excuse (and/or feel guilty) if

they do break a norm. And they share collaboratively produced

resources with their partner, but not others, with a sense of equal-

ity and mutual respect. And then, from soon after their third

birthdays, children begin to conform to the practices of their cul-

tural group and to insist on conformity to the group’s social

norms from others (often using normative language). They

enforce conventional norms selectively on in-group members,

and, by 5 years of age, enforce even self-created norms on others,

demonstrating an understanding that the normative force ema-

nates not from adult authority (as suggested by Piaget 1932),

but rather from the process of social agreement. Children of

this age identify with their cultural group and judge that in-group

compatriots are obliged to one another more than to outsiders.

Other creatures do not experience a sense of obligation because

they do not socially interact with one another in any of these

ways.

The most general point is that the conditions which give rise to

a feeling of obligation are interactive in some very special ways. If I

have an obligation to you, then you have a right to expect me to

fulfill it: You have a claim on me, and I feel the possibility of my

debt to you if I do not meet it. But you cannot make this claim on

me unilaterally; simply saying you have a claim on me does not cre-

ate an obligation. To feel a sense of obligation, I must recognize

the legitimacy of your claim. In the current account, this recogni-

tion of legitimacy occurs in, and only in, the context of some

social body, “we,” that unites us and supports this legitimacy nor-

matively – because we not only collaborate to pursue shared goals,

but we also collaborate to self-regulate the collaboration. The pro-

totypical situation for a feeling of obligation is thus one in which

you and I voluntarily enter into some kind of shared agency in

which we both recognize the legitimacy of the claim-obligation

relationship that is thereby created. In the legal world, a contract

is a “chosen obligation.”

And so, to describe the architecture of the human sense of

obligation in the mature individual, we need two key components.

The first begins with the general primate sense of “instrumental

pressure,” in which the individual feels a kind of rational force

to do what it needs to do to achieve its goal: To get that apple,

I must climb that tree. But what has happened in humans is

that, in the context of their species-unique forms of interdepen-

dent collaboration, this kind of individual practical rationality

has been transformed into a new kind of cooperative rationality.

Within a collaborative partnership, I have not only instrumental

goals toward the outside world, but also interpersonal goals

with respect to my valued partner and our partnership. And, in

the context of an interdependent partnership in which we both

understand that the normative standards of role performance

apply to us both equally, I cannot help but see my partner as

an equal, and she me, engendering the sense of mutual respect

that generates excuses, justifications, and apologies for breaches.

For us to harvest those apples together cooperatively, and to main-

tain our cooperative relationship over time, we must each play our

mutually known roles up to standard, while at the same time

respecting one another by living up to our commitments, by ask-

ing permission to break our commitment, and by sharing the

spoils fairly.

The second component begins with the general primate pro-

cess of self-regulation, in which individuals monitor their own

perceptions and actions from an executive level in order to

learn and adapt. But what has happened in humans is that indi-

viduals living in an interdependent world must care about what

others think of them – as collaborative partners and cultural com-

patriots – and so there occurs a kind of social self-regulation,

which is unique to the species (Engelmann et al. 2012). The

type of social self-regulation that is most critical for understand-

ing the human sense of obligation is conducted by the “we” that

an individual forms with a collaborative partner or cultural com-

patriot. Critically, as opposed to reputation-based theories of the

evolution of morality, the key is not just what “they” will think of

me if I do X (which is strategic and associated with the emotion of

shame), but what “we” will think of me if I do X based on our

shared values (which is moral and associated with the emotion

of guilt). One’s sociomoral identity derives from participation in

and contributions to a “we,” and to maintain that identity one

simply must respect the judgment of that “we” over my individual

judgments (a we > me valuation). The sense of obligation has a

coercive (negative) quality because it is a response to a claim –

nay, a threat – to my identity from the valued partners and/or

compatriots with whom I am interdependent. I internalize this

normative pressure, in Vygotskian fashion, and use it to avoid

feeling guilty and losing my sense of who I am socially.

To summarize, we may thus say that the human sense of obli-

gation is the internalized social/rational pressure from a joint or

collective self-regulating agent “

we”–which comprises myself

in my sociomoral identity and one or more respected second-

personal agents with legitimate claims on me as an interdepen-

dent collaborative partner or cultural compatriot – to do what

“we” expect me to.

4. Conclusion

Hume was the first to recognize that the morality of justice/fair-

ness, and the sense of obligation that goes along with it, is struc-

tured by a certain kind of social interaction. He thought that this

was societal convention, but it turns out there are other less con-

ventionalized forms of collaborative social engagement that still

represent enough of an agreement, even if implicit, to induce a

feeling of obligation to one’s partner. Darwall and other social-

relational theorists have focused on the “spectator” aspect of

Hume’s approach, and its inability to account for some of the

key features of a sense of obligation, including its pre-

emptiveness, its negative valence, and its imprimatur of legiti-

macy. They have attempted to explicate various features of the

second-personal standpoint, and the nature of second-personal

agents, that correct this shortcoming. However, these social-

relational theorists have not given much attention to the

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underlying psychology that gives rise to the forms of social

engagement requisite for the individual to feel a sense of obliga-

tion to other persons.

In this article I have retained the social-relational philosophers’

insights about the second-personal standpoint, but have tried to

dig deeper into the social-interactive situations in which the

human sense of obligation arises and operates. I have done that

by focusing on processes of shared intentionality as a mode of

social engagement that creates a joint or collective agent “we,”

especially as young children are first learning to collaborate.

Convention or explicit agreement can play a role in interactions

structured by shared intentionality, but they need not. Even

3-year-old children behave in ways that evidence a sense of

responsibility to their collaborative partner – not only deferring

to their partner but also by “taking leave,” making excuses, and

feeling guilty, as appropriate – since members of a joint agency

both see one another as equals and subordinate their own goals

to those of the partnership. After 3 years of age, children’s emerg-

ing group-mindedness brings with it the universal and objective

sense of obligation ch aracteristic of adults, whose social identity

comes from their role as members of their culture and/or moral

community. Only in such situations of shared agency with others

do individuals imbue the claims of others with the sense of legit-

imacy characteristic of a sense of obligation.

I began this account with the observation that the sense of

obligation is presumably a motivation (what else?), but that it is

a decidedly peculiar one. Let us end with a characterization of

this peculiarity by means of a classification. In the current view,

the human sense of obligation is best considered as a kind of self-

conscious motivation, analogous to the self-conscious emotion of

guilt. And, indeed, obligation is intimately related to guilt, as most

often guilt is about not living up to one’s obligations. Both guilt

and obligation have to do with one’s sense of who one is: “I

must do this because that would just not be me.” The sense of

obligation may thus be considered as a self-conscious motivation

because it derives from a kind of threat from a “we,” into which

one has entered, that one might lose one’s cooperative or moral

identity within that “we.” It is not clear whether there are other

motivations that one might also want to call self-conscious,

other than closely related motives such as a sense of responsibility

or the like. But in either case, this would seem to be an apt cate-

gorization of the peculiar nature of the sense of obligation as one

of humans ’ most important moral motivations.

In all, I would argue, recognizing the insights of the second-

personal philosophers and related approaches, and undergirding

them with the psychological foundation of shared intentionality,

provides the most comprehensive account to date of the underly-

ing psychology of the human sense of obligation.

Notes

1 Evolutionarily, joint commitments to collaborate are a key way of mitigating

risk, as partners make sure that they both know in common ground that they

are depending on one another, and so they assure one another that they can be

depended upon to behave in expected ways.

2 Brosnan and de Waal (2003) claimed that capuchin monkeys have a sense of

fairness. There are six published failures to replicate their results (with both

monkeys and chimpanzees) using appropriate controls from five other labora-

tories (for a review, see Tomasello 2016, pp. 32–34).

3 Of course, children this young do not view the adults with whom they are

interacting as co-equals in general. But when they are rolling a ball back and

forth or building a tower together, they are, in the context of that play activity,

co-equal play partners.

4 Also important is the fact that there is much cultural variability in how

humans view reciprocity: Some so-called gift cultures act as though every pro-

social act creates an obligation in return, whereas many other cultures do not.

Reciprocity’s tie to obligation is thus culturally contingent.

Open Peer Commentary

Differentiating between different

forms of moral obligations

Rajen A. Anderson

, Benjamin C. Ruisch

and David A. Pizarro

Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-7601 and

Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, OH 43210.

[email protected] http://rajenanderson.com

[email protected] http://benrusich.com

[email protected] http://www.peezer.net

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002589, e57

Abstract

We argue that Tomasello’s account overlooks important psycho-

logical distinctions between how humans judge different types of

moral obligations, such as prescriptive obligations (i.e., what one

should do) and proscriptive obligations (i.e., what one should not

do). Specifically, evaluating these different types of obligations

rests on different psychological inputs and has distinct down-

stream consequences for judgments of moral character.

Tomasello draws from research on nonhuman primates and

human children to position moral obligation as a uniquely

human motivation, arguing that the psychological construction

of a shared agent “we” works to direct and self-regulate collabo-

rative activities in humans, giving rise to a sense of moral obliga-

tion. However, we argue that this account, while illuminating,

overlooks key distinctions between different kinds of moral obli-

gations – and, importantly, the distinct psychological processes

that they entail. Among the most central of these distinctions is

that found between prescriptive obligations (i.e., obligations to

engage in certain positive, beneficial behaviors; e.g., one should

help others in need) and proscriptive obligations (i.e., obligations

not to engage in certain negative, harmful behaviors; e.g., one

should not hurt others). When we fulfill and adhere to prescrip-

tive obligations, we generally earn praise and gratitude; when we

violate proscriptive obligations, we generally earn blame and pun-

ishment. Additionally, failures to meet prescriptive obligations

and non-violations of proscriptive obligations are relatively less

relevant to observers (e.g., Haidt & Baron 1996).

Importantly, social psychological research has revealed differ-

ences between how prescriptive fulfillments and proscriptive vio-

lations are evaluated. Adults tend to judge proscriptive morality as

concrete, mandatory, and duty-based, while viewing prescriptive

morality as abstract, discretionary, and based in either duty or

desire; even framing the same basic moral act as either prescrip-

tive or prescriptive can change people’s judgments (Janoff-

Bulman et al. 2009). Additionally, adults treat beliefs about

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immoral acts (i.e., violations of obligation) as more objective,

agreed upon by others, and true than beliefs about moral acts

(i.e., fulfillments of obligation; Goodwin & Darley 2012). On

the whole, then, proscriptive obligations appear to have more psy-

chological weight than prescriptive obligations.

It may be possible to reconcile these asymmetries within

Tomasello’s theoretical framework – for example, it may be that

proscriptive obligations entail a greater sense of “we” in their for-

mation and enforcement – but more work will be necessary to

assess these possibilities.

Additionally, the process by which observers judge violations

of obligation and fulfillments of obligation also appears to differ.

For example, im moral, obligation-violating acts tend to elicit more

causal attribution and counterfactual thinking than moral,

obligation-fulfilling acts (Bohner et al. 1998; Bostyn & Roets

2016; Roese & Olson 1997). In addition, although agent inten-

tionality influences the perceived morality and immorality of

both obligation-fulfilling acts and obligation-violating acts, inten-

tionality appears to matter more for evaluating blameworthy acts

than praiseworthy acts (Guglielmo & Malle 2019; Ohtsubo 2007;

Pizarro et al. 2003). For example, both adults and children judge

unintended, obligation-violating “side effects” (of a person’s

actions) to be blameworthy. However, they fail to judge unin-

tended, obligation-upholding side effects to be equally praiseworthy

(Knobe 2003a; 2003b; Leslie et al. 2006). People also more readily

incorporate the magnitude of the consequences of proscriptive obli-

gations than prescriptive obligations into their judgments of the

agent (Gneezy & Epley 2014;Klein&Epley2014). Together, this

research suggests that judgments of proscriptive obligations incor-

porate factors related to causality, intentionality, and consequences

more than do judgments of prescriptive obligations.

Importantly, research suggests that even young children have

an awareness of this distinction between prescriptive and pro-

scriptive violations. For example, children have been shown to

exhibit better memory for negative, obligation-violating individu-

als than positive, obligation-fulfillin g individuals (Barclay &

Lalumiere 2006; Kinzler & Shutts 2008). Additionally, children

as young as 14 months have greater difficulty following do’s

than don’ts (Kochanska et al. 2001). These findings suggest that

these asymmetries do not simply reflect “second step” (sect. 2,

para. 2) differences attributable to culture-specific learning, but

rather emerge at an earlier onto genetic stage.

These differences in judgments of prescriptive and proscriptive

obligations suggest that there are important nuances to how

developing humans learn about the moral obligations of their

group and culture – and that the processes by which we learn

about, represent, and evaluate prescriptive obligations (e.g., to

obey our elders) may be different from those of proscriptive obli-

gations (e.g., to not harm others).

Additionally, there is also evidence that the relevant weight

accorded to each of these forms of obligation can differ as a func-

tion of the specific context in which they are embedded. For

example, these two broad classes of moral obligation also seem

to operate somewhat distinctly across intergroup boundaries.

This appears to be an important caveat to Tomasello’s claim

that obligation “applies to, and only to, one’s cultural compatri-

ots” (sect. 2.2, para. 2). Whereas we agree that this claim generally

holds true regarding prescriptive obligations (e.g., there is little

expectation that one will help members of cultural outgroups),

proscriptive obligations seem to be more common across inter-

group boundaries (e.g., the obligation not to willingly harm mem-

bers of cultural outgroups).

One apparent example of these asymmetries is the (rapidly

growing) number of public apologies made by leaders of majority

(racial/ethnic, religious, and/or cultural) groups for past injustices

to minority groups – apologies which, almost without exception,

center on violations of proscriptive obligations not to harm, rather

than violations of prescriptive obligations (Blatz et al. 2009; Lazare

2004).

As Tomasello suggests, these cross-group apologies may indi-

cate “an expanded sense of all of humanity as in one’s in-group

moral community” (sect. 2.2, para. 2). However, his account

does not explain these apparent asymmetries in how prescriptive

and proscriptive obligations operate across group boundaries.

We suggest that these prescriptive/proscriptive asymmetries

may offer Tomasello a promising opportunity to refine his theory

of moral obligation. These differences in how observers evaluate

proscriptive and prescriptive obligations suggest that there may

be different forms of obligation, each utilizing distinct psycholog-

ical processes. At the very least, different moral obligations appear

to engender different responses when they are upheld or violated.

What psychologically distinguishes prescriptive obligations from

proscriptive obligations? How could such differences emerge?

For a complete account of the psychology of moral obligations,

these questions ought to be addressed.

Obligations to whom, obligations to

what? A philosophical perspective on

the objects of our obligations

Kati Kish Bar-On

The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv

University, Tel Aviv Yafo, Israel, 6997801.

[email protected] http://telaviv.academia.edu/KatiKish

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002395, e58

Abstract

Tomasello strives to understand the underlying psychology

behind the human sense of obligation, but he only addresses a

specific kind of obligation: to other human beings. We argue

that in order to account for the psychological underpinning of

human behavior, one should also consider people’s sense of

commitment to non-human entities, such as ideals, values,

and moral principles.

Tomasello presents a compelling analysis of the motivating force

behind humans’ sense of obligation, focusing on the intersubjec-

tive structure of an obligation. However, obligations are not always

immersed in agreements only between individuals. Occasionally,

they are promises we make to ourselves, our commitments to a

particular ideal of living or a moral value – entities that

Tomasello does not discuss. These two different types of obliga-

tions can together explain individuals’ behavior. If Bob is impu-

dent to Charlie and Alice condemns Bob’s behavior, Alice’s

criticism may derive from her heartfelt commitment to a certain

principle of proper behavior to which she holds everyone account-

able; she does not necessarily think that Bob has a sense of

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obligation to Charlie or anyone else. She holds Bob accountable to

the standard itself, not to other people. Alice cares about the ideal

of proper behavior; therefore, it is important to her that people fol-

low a certain behavioral standard when engaging with others.

The philosopher Harry Frankfurt argued that human behavior is

shapedbythethingswecareabout(Frankfurt1982). Although eth-

ical considerations regulate our relations with other people (using

moral obligations), we often do not find the requir ements of ethics

to be the only things we care about. Even people with a strong sense

of moral obliga tions to others can care equally about ideals such as

being loyal to a family tradition or can devote themselves to ecolog-

ical principles of fighting climate change (Frankfurt 2006).

Some people find moral obligations to be their most important

obligations, above all other commitments. Others may choose to

intentionally violate a moral obligation to another person not

because there is a stronger moral obligation to which they are

committed, but rather because they consider a certain value,

ideal, or course of action to be more important to them than

meeting the demands of moral obligations to others. Frankfurt’s

work draws our attention to the possibility that a unanimous hier-

archical scale of obligations (where morality is superior to all

other commitments) may not exist. An individual’s sense of obli-

gation to other people as well as to specific values or standards

varies not only between people but also between situations: A per-

son can choose to fulfill his obligation to another individual in

one situation, but in a different circumstance he might choose

to obey his commitment to a certain value or ideal over a

moral obligation to a person.

Frankfurt has addressed this type of commitment as an inte-

gral part of one’s inner identity, which serves as the reason and

motivation for one’s actions. He writes:

A person who cares about something is, as it were, invested in it. He iden-

tifies himself with what he cares about in the sense that he makes himself

vulnerable to losses and susceptible to benefits depending upon whether

what he cares about is diminished or enhanced. Thus he concerns himself

with what concerns it, giving particular attention to such things and

directing his behavior accordingly. (Frankfurt 1988, p. 83)

People whose behavior is governed by their commitments to the

ideals they care about rather than by their moral obligations to

others may be considered self-centered or judged as a person

who lacks empathy. However, as Frankfurt has pointed out, the

structure of people’s personality is more complex than a one-

dimensional scale of morality on one end and self-interest on

the other. He argued that persons may feel committed to certain

cultural or religious ideals that derive neither from moral nor ego-

istic considerations and may pursue those nonmoral ideals with-

out considering their own personal goals (Frankfurt 2004).

Even though Frankfurt challenged the widely accepted author-

itative nature of moral obligations, he did not claim that our rela-

tionships with other people or the moral requirements for

maintaining those relationships are not important to us. He

offered the possibility that other types of commitmen ts may

count as heavily or even more heavily with us, and he held that

one should not assume that moral obligations always override

them. For Frankfurt, what guides our behavior is not our moral

or nonmoral obligations per se, but rather our attitude toward

them: how much we care about these obligations and how impor-

tant it is for us to carry them out.

According to Frankfurt, the fact that one cares about a certain

thing is constituted by a complex set of cognitive dispositions, but

he did not account for the interpersonal factors that affect those

dispositions. The role of an individual’s social environment and

group expectations in shaping human behavior is, to some extent,

left out of Frankfurt’s discussion. To fill the lacuna, let us return

to Alice’s disapproval of Bob’s behavior: Even if Alice profoundly

cares about a certain ideal of proper behavior, why should she

hold Bob accountable to the same ideal? What urges her to con-

demn Bob’s acts? Whereas Frankfurt did not engage in this type

of question, Tomasello considers the societal aspects that are

missing from Frankfurt’s account. In Tomasello’s view, the origins

of Alice’s expectations may derive from her view of herself, Bob,

and Charlie, as members of the same cultural group. As such, all

group members are obligated to conform to the group’s ways or, if

not, they must provide an explanation for their deviation. The

object of Alice’s sense of obligation may be a standard rather

than a person, but in any case, her cultural id entity and group

affiliation will always play a significant role in the process of cul-

tivating the things she cares about and her attitude toward

transgression.

To conclude, human or non-human entities can be the objects

of our feelings of obligation, and those, in turn, influence and

shape our behavior. My intention in this commentary was to

point toward an enhanced psychological account of humans’

sense of obligation, including the approaches of both Frankfurt

and Tomasello. Each theory portrays only part of the picture;

together, they offer a more comprehensive account of individuals’

feelings of obligation and the objects of those feelings.

Children’s everyday moral

conversation speaks to the

emergence of obligation

Karen Bartsch

Psychology Department, Wyoming University, Laramie, WY 82071-3415.

[email protected] http://www.uwyo.edu/psychology/faculty/bartsch.html

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002358, e59

Abstract

For Tomasello’s proposed ontology of the human sense of moral

obligation, observations of early moral language may provide

useful evidence complementary to that afforded by experimental

research. Extant reports of children’s everyday moral talk reveal

patterns of participation and content that accord with the pro-

posal and hint at extensions addressing individual differences.

In his account of the ontogeny of our human sense of moral obli-

gation, Tomasello pinpoints its origin in early joint intentional

action and describes two developments in the preschool years:

the first regarding interpersonal obligation between collaborative

partners and the second regarding norm-based morality within

a cultural group. Tomasello invokes extensive support from clev-

erly designed experimental studies of young children’s behavior

(e.g., Gräfenhain et al. 2009; Rekers et al. 2011), which have the

dual virtues of bypassing young children’s verbal limitations

and facilitating cross-species comparisons. But Tomasello’s

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reliance on experimental findings raises the question of how well

the account tallies with real-life observations.

I suggest that compl ementary evidence is available in observa-

tions of children’s everyday interactions, especially conversations

about morality. To be clear, Tomasello does incorporate research

involving language, such as his own finding that children react to

transgression with protest that reflects normativity (Rakoczy et al.

2008). But a different perspective is afforded by observations of

children’s real-life interactions. For instance, in exploring emerg-

ing moral sensitivity as revealed in two children’s at-home talk

with adults (Wright & Bartsch 2008), we noted patterns that

accord intriguingly with Tomasello’s account. We examined

1,333 conversations involving moral terms (e.g., “good,”

“wrong,”“mean”) sampled from “Abe” and “Sarah” as they

aged from 2.5 to 5 years (Wright & Bartsch 2008), utilizing

archived transcriptions from the CHILDES database

(MacWhinney 2000). Surprisingly, such conversations were

most frequent, relative to other talk, when children were 2.5–3,

compared to 4–5, years of age. We speculated that the early inten-

sity of such talk reflected the new autonomy, mobility, and active

participation associated with the “terrible twos,” noting also its

coincidence with frequent talk about the desires of the children

and adults, a recognized milestone in theory-of-mind develop-

ment (e.g., Bartsch & Wellman 1995). Tomasello’s proposal

expands the explanation: Perhaps as 2- and 3-year-olds, Abe

and Sarah were constructing with their collaborators (here, con-

versational partners) the hypothesized second-personal morality

that constitutes initial sensitivity to obligation. The ensuing

decline in such conversation, relative to other talk, perhaps

reflected the second phase when an acquired understanding of

group norms reduced explicit reference to moral rules, now

assumed to be universally recognized (e.g., Mamman et al. 2018 ).

Another characteristic of Abe’s and Sarah’s early moral conver-

sations that tallies with Tomasello’s account is the active role played

by children in such discussions (Wright & Bartsch 2008). Far from

being passive recipients, both children surpassed their adult inter-

locuters in initiating moral conversations and did so as though they

were exploring the rules and roles of those involved. Even as 2- and

3-year-olds, Abe and Sarah used moral terms frequently to give and

request reasons (e.g., “because he’s nice to nice people,” Wright &

Bartsch 2008, p. 61) more than for other purposes, such as to com-

municate feelings or to disapprove of actions, a functional disparity

that increased with age. Abe at age 3, for instance, said, “You could

have put it on the floor for me. I asked you so you should have

done it” (Wright & Bartsch 2008, p. 61).

Young children are not only surprisingly active in everyday

moral conversation, as fits with Tomasello’s proposition that

they are constructing a sense of moral obligation, but their favored

topics also accord with the account. Abe’s and Sarah

’s conversa-

tions focused on mostly internal as opposed to external motiva-

tions, specifically on dispositions and behavior, primarily those

of other people, and especially on bad behavior (Wright &

Bartsch 2008). Other researchers have similarly reported young

children’s fascination with others’ dispositions and transgressions,

observing, for instance, that children focus more on a sibling’s,

than on their own, transgression (e.g., Dunn & Munn 1986;

Ross & den Bak-Lammers 1998). Dunn (1987), who conducted

comprehensive and systematic longitudinal studies of conversa-

tion among family trios consisting of a parent, a toddler, and

an older sibling, reported that by age 2, children communicated

openly about both obligation and blame with respect to family

social rules and others’ feelings. These observations accord with

Tomasello’s characterization of emergent obligation, adding per-

spective and detail from the child’s actual context and voice.

Observations of children’s everyday conversations may also

provide clues about individual differences in a developing sense

of moral obligation. For example, although both Abe and Sarah

initiated most moral discussions, Abe was active in 80% of conver-

sations compared to Sarah at 60%, rates maintained throughout

the several years (Wright & Bartsch 2008). Conversation content

also differed: For Abe, feelings and others’ welfare was the

modal topic, characterizing 25% of moral conversations, while

for Sarah issues of obedience and punishment were modal at

50% (Wright & Bartsch 2008). These differences hint at divergent

paths in moral focus and maybe in a sense of obligation. Evidence

across studies suggests that contexts may figure importantly in

individual trajectories. For Abe and Sarah, most moral conversa-

tions concerned immediate interpersonal interests rather than

impersonal and abstract topics such as social rules (Wright &

Bartsch 2008), consistent with Tomasello’s characterization of

the earliest sensibility regarding obligation. Dunn (1987), however,

reported an increase over toddlerhood in the frequency with which

mothers and older siblings spoke to toddlers about social rules and

broken or flawed objects. It may matter whether early interactions

involve only the child and parent, as in the observations of Abe

and Sarah, as opposed to involving the child, a parent, and an

older sibling, as in Dunn’s(1987) research. Such comparisons

highlight the role of context, a factor acknowledged by

Tomasello in his discussion of cross-cultural variation. Intensive

observations of conversations suggest that, even across families,

who is talking and what is talked about matter. For instance, pre-

tend play has been observed to be a common context for moral

discussion, although an activity that differs across families (e.g.,

Dunn 1987; Wright & Bartsch 2008). These examples suggest

that extant and future observational studies can contribute not

only specificity regarding the nature of critical early interactions

but also to an understanding of emergent individual differences

as they relate to a developing sense of moral obligation.

The role of affect in feelings

of obligation

Stefen Beeler-Duden, Meltem Yucel

and Amrisha Vaish

Psychology Department, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903.

[email protected]

https://pages.shanti.virginia.edu/Social_Development_Lab_3/

[email protected] www.meltemyucel.com

(corresponding author)

[email protected]

https://pages.shanti.virginia.edu/Social_Development_Lab_3/

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002449, e60

Abstract

Tomasello offers a compelling account of the emergence of

humans’ sense of obligation. We suggest that more needs to be

said about the role of affect in the creation of obligations. We

also argue that positive emotions such as gratitude evolved to

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encourage individuals to fulfill cooperative obligations without the

negativ e quality that Tomasello proposes is inherent in obligations.

Tomasello offers a compelling account of the evolutionary and

ontogenetic emergence of the uniquely human sense of obliga-

tion. The target article alludes to some affective experiences in

these “feelings of obligation” but does not directly address the

role of emotions. Further, to the extent that Tomasello does con-

sider the role of affect, he describes obligations as having a funda-

mentally coercive (negative) quality. In this commentary, we

propose (1) a more central role of affect in the development of

a sense of obligation, and (2) that positive emotions such as grat-

itude represent an evolutionary solution to the fundamentally

negative quality of obligations.

First, Tomasello emphasizes the development of obligation

through the me–you equivalence established first through collabo-

rative activities and then in cultural groups. This account is cer-

tainly persuasive, but we think that it is not sufficient. Research

shows that from the very start, children’s collaborative interactions

are also heavily affect-laden, and this affect is vital for establishing

their sense of obligation. According to the affect-as-information

theory (Storbeck & Clore 2008), affective signals provide children

with cues about what is safe and important in the environment.

For example, visual cliff experiments show that even 1-year-olds

take their parent’s nonverbal signals into account and use their

emotional expressions to make decisions about their future behav-

iors (e.g., whether or not to crawl across the cliff; Sorce et al. 1985).

More pertinently, caregivers use affect to convey vital informa-

tion about obligations to infants and young children. For instance,

parents use distinct affect when communicating with infants

about norm violations compared to pragmatic violations (Dahl

&Tran2016). Parents even use distinct affect when comm unicat-

ing about moral versus other kinds of norm violations: They use

angry vocalizations when their infant violates a moral norm (e.g.,

hits another person) but use fearful vocalizations when their

infant violates a prudential norm (e.g., harming themselves;

Dahl et al. 2014). This affective information guides children’s

attention to important distinctions between various types of social

norms and the obligations that accompany those norms (Arsenio

& Ford 1985). This in turn helps children to successfully navigate

their obligations and avoid breaking commitments. Affect-laden

testimonies, for example, moralize novel rule violations and elicit

moral judgments from children (Rottman & Kelemen 2012;

Rottman et al. 2017). Similarly, among young children as well

as adults, witnessing violations of moral norms induces higher

physiological arousal than witnessing violations of conventional

norms (Yucel et al., in press). As mentioned by Tomasello, as

children begin to differentiate these social norms from one

another, they begin to understand who is obligated to adhere to

particular norms and when an individual is obligated to do so.

Affect-laden communication and children’s own affective experi-

ences thus aid children in developing a sense of obligation and

help children work out the nuances of the particular system of

obligation in which they must function.

Second, Tomasello argues that obligation makes us do things

we do not want to do but feel we must do. He emphasizes the neg-

ative emotions associated with obligation (guilt, blame, and resent-

ment) and argues that positive emotions (such as gratitude) cannot

account for a sense of obligation. We propose, however, that pos-

itive emotions such as gratitude, which motivate us to reciprocate

favors to our benefactors, may have evolved precisely to counter

the fundamentally negative quality of obligation: to turn actions

such as reciprocity into something we want to do, not only because

it is right but also because it feels good. On its face, this goes

against Tomasello’s argument that obligation cannot involve

things we want to do. Yet perhaps the ultimate and proximate sto-

ries diverge on this point: In our evolutionary history, we needed

psychological mechanisms to make us put aside our selfish inter-

ests and invest in our cooperative, interdependent relationships (as

Tomasello himself has elegantly argued: e.g., Tomasello 2016a).

Emotions are just such psychological mechanisms (Krebs 2008;

Nesse & Ellsworth 2009). It is highly likely, then, that some emo-

tions have evolved to help us fulfill our obligations to others. Some

of these emotions are negative (resentment, guilt), but some are

also positive (gratitude). At the proximate (ontogenetic) level,

these positive emotions do not seem to carry the fundamentally

coercive quality of obligations. However, we submit that positive

emotions are precisely the evolutionary trick that allows us to hap-

pily carry out many of our social obligations. Positive emotions are

part of the toolbox that allows us to meet our obligations, and to

do so without resenting them.

Taken together, we seek to highlight the important functions

that affect serves in the emergence of the human sense of obliga-

tion. We presented evidence from the affect literature and argued

that affect plays an important role in how obligations are socialized

and maintained during development. Moreover, we suggested that

positive emotions may have evolved to counteract the negativity

associated with the sense of obligation one feels to one’s collabora-

tive partners and cultural group. Thus, we argue that a full account

of the evolutionary and ontogenetic emergence of humans’ sense

of obligation must include the vital role of affect in the creation,

enforcement, and maintenance of these obligations.

NOTE

Beeler-Duden and Yucel contributed equally.

The sense of obligation is

culturally modulated

Andrea Bender

Department of Psychosocial Science & SFF Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour,

University of Bergen, N-5020 Bergen, Norway.

[email protected] https://www.uib.no/en/persons/Andrea.Bender

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002371, e61

Abstract

Tomasello argues in the target article that, in generalizing the

concrete obligations originating from interdependent collaboration

to one’s entire cultural group, humans become “ultra-cooper a tors.”

But are all human popula tion s cooperative in similar wa ys? Based

on cross-cultural studies and my o wn fieldwork in Polynesia, I

argue that cooper a tion varies along sever al dimensions, and that

the underlying sense of obligation is cultur ally modulated.

Tomasello presents a compelling account of how the human sense

of obligation arises from shared intentionality and interdependent

collaboration. Developing this concrete, collaboration-dependent

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obligation into a generalized support of one’s cultural group

(“obligation period”), he argues, turns humans into a highly coop-

erative species. Although cultural variability in this second step is

acknowledged, its profound impact appears to be underestimated.

Obligation is one of the four deontic modalities, along with

ban, permission, and release from obligation (often expressed

by way of modal verbs: “must,”“must not,”“may,” and “need

not”). These modalities are systematically interrelated in a “square

of opposition,” constituting the structure of the deontic system

(Beller 2012). People are highly competent in drawing inferences

based on these interrelations, which must remain in place to pre-

serve the system’s consistency and operability, such as that obliga-

tion entails permission, or that something forbidden cannot

simultaneously be prescribed (Beller 2008; 2010). Due to these

logical exigencies, deontic systems are invariable on an abstract

level. What does vary across cultures is their content: the concrete

things that are forbidden, prescribed, or permitted.

Promises are a textbook example at the intersection of the

human sense of obligation and cooperation. Promises create a

social contract between the two parties involved, cutting across

five psychologically relevant levels: (1) As an attempt to induce a

behavioral change in the addressee, promises reflect a specific

motivation, the wish to initiate cooperation, and (2) they are for-

mulated in a specific linguistic manner. (3) Promises entail deontic

implications, generating an obligation for the speaker, contingent

on a cooperative act of the addressee in the case of a conditional

promise. For promises to work, it is essential that the ensuing obli-

gation is perceived as binding, as the addressee has only the speak-

er’s word to go on. (4) On the behavioral level, the involved parties

decide whether or not to cooperate, with either outcome then (5)

eliciting distinct affective responses (Beller et al. 2005).

Some core characteristics are implicated in the very concept of

promises and hence should be universal. Their structure is deter-

mined by actions, goals, and expectations; they entail asymmetries

in terms of ensuing obligations and the temporal sequence of

decisions to be made; and their binding force should be indepen-

dent of how close the relationship between the parties is. Still, a

study with participants from Germ any, China, and Tonga

revealed cultural variation on almost all levels (Beller et al.

2009). For instance, the linguistic formulation considered most

appropriate varied with culture-specific communication styles,

and affective responses to a kept or broken promise depended

on display rules for emotions. Crucially, even the deontic implica-

tions were modulated by cultural conventions. In Tonga, a

Polynesian archipelago in the Western Pacific, the very ut terance

of a conditional promise was found to exert pressure on the

addr essee – that is, an obligation to be responsive to the promise –

hence coercing an act of cooperation not necessarily volunteered

otherwise. Interestingly, this was accompanied by a reduced obli-

gation for the speaker to actually keep the promise. It is as if con-

ditional promises were simply understood as a request for a favor

(“I want you to do this for me”). Since the addressee is obligated

to fulfill this wish, the promised return-favor may be discounted.

In other words, obligations originate not only from the deontic

structure of promises, but also load on external rules arising from

the cultural value system. In Tonga, this includes the prime virtue

of reciprocal help ( fetokoni’aki), which is grounded in respect and

concern for others, is reflected in and reinforced by a strong ori-

entation towards the group, and obligates people to provide

mutual support and to share food and other resources (Bender

2007). Although this solidarity network incurs economic costs

for the individual, it also generates an informal insurance system

for all (Bender et al. 2002). Similar patterns have been observed

more widely both within and across the small island communities

of the Pacific (e.g., Hage & Harary 1996; Petersen 2000). And yet,

this is only one possible outcome of the cultural patterning of

cooperation and obligation.

Two large-scale studies by Henrich et al. (2005; 2010) demon-

strated astounding variability in what different cultural groups

hold to be cooperative and fair. Using economic games to assess

the willingness to share with anonymous members of one’s group,

participants were found to differ substantially in the share they

were willing to offer, in the size of offers they were willing to

accept, or in the expenses they were willing to invest in the pun-

ishment of those who violated norms of cooperation. In some

groups, much lower shares were both offered and accepted than

is typical for WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich,

and democratic) populations, whereas other groups reject ed

even highly generous offers. Respective tendencies co-varied sys-

tematically with characteristics of the group (such as community

size) and its cultural institutions, including economic organization,

the structuring of social inte ractions, or the type of religion.

Especially in small groups – the default state in large parts of

human history – the concern with fairness appeared to be lower

in situations lacking relationship information, suggesting that

“modern prosociality is not solely the product of an innate psychol-

ogy, but also reflects norms and institutions that have emerged over

the course of human history” (Henrich et al. 2010, p. 1480).

In a nutshell, obligation period is modulated by cultural conven-

tions and practices along several dimensions: by shaping the con-

ceptualization of self-declared commitments, the kinds of

obligations perceived as arising from them, and even the emotional

responses linked to them. This impacts on the extent to which the

sense of obligation is generalized to in-group strangers and on the

scope of cooperation deemed appropriate, rendering culture one of

the most powerful forces in forming human cognition (Bender &

Beller 2019) and social behavior (Henrich et al. 2005). Considering

this profound impact enables the surprising insight that culture

itself evolved to stabilize and generalize the predisposition for

cooperative relationships in our species by fostering and molding

the sense of obligation, even if in culture-specific ways.

Tomasello on “we” and the sense

of obligation

Michael E. Bratman

Philosophy Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.

bra[email protected]

https://philosophy.stanford.edu/people/michael-e-bratman

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002383, e62

Abstract

Tomasello explores four interrelated phenomena: (1) joint inten-

tional collaboration; (2) joint commitment; (3) “self-regulative

pressure from ‘we’”; and (4) the sense of interpersonal obliga-

tion. He argues that the version of (1) that involves (2) is the

“source” of (3) and so the source of (4). I note an issue that arises

once we distinguish two versions of (3).

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To masello in the target article exploresfourinterrelatedphenomena:

1. joint intentional collaboration

2. joint commitment

3. “self-regulative pressure from ‘we’” (sect. 2.1.3, para. 3)

4. sense of interpersonal obligation

His “shared intentionality hypothesis” aims to “undergird” (4)

“with the psychological foundation of shared intentionality.”

Tomasello sometimes suggests that (4) “arises” from (1).

However, he notes that a child can be “just playing with the

adult spontaneously, in the absence of a joint commitment”

(sect. 2.1.2.1, para. 5) But “playing with [an] adult”–even if spon-

taneous – is not merely playing alongside an adult. If the child is

playing with the adult then there is a kind of joint intentional col-

laboration, and both the child and the adult may well think: “we

are playing together.” There is a “we.” But, Tomasello notes, there

is not yet “joint commitment”; and, as I understand Tomasello,

there is not yet (4).

This complexity arises within the “interim hypothesis … that

participation in joint intentional collaboration, especially as initia ted

by a joint commitment, is the earliest source of children’s … feeling

of obligation.” (sect. 2.1.3, para. 5) This seems to say tha t (1) is the

“source” of (4), and (2) is just a special case of (1). But this does not

fit with the recognition of the possibility of (1) in the absence of (2)

and (4). So I think the best reading of Tomasello’shypothesisisthat

the “source” of the sense of obligation is (2), not simply (1).

What is joint commitment? Elsewhere Tomasello has said that

joint commitment consists in “collaborative activity … initiated

by an overt and explicit act of cooperative communication”

(Engelmann & Tomasello 2018, p. 440). But, first, I take it that

the relevant overt acts will be, more specifically, forms of assur-

ance. And, second, if it is a joint com mitment, it is necessary

that all parties assure. So, I take the view to be that jointly inten-

tional collaborative activity that is initiated by such a web of assur-

ances is the source of the sense of obligation.

Further, Tomasello

’s proposal is that (2) is the source of (4)

because (2) is the source of (3), and (3) in turn ensures (4).

When he writes that “the sense of obligation … is nothi ng

more or less … than the motivational force that accompanies

the creation of a joint or collective agent ‘we’…” (sect. 3, para. 6)

he is seeing “a joint or collective agent ‘we’” as involving “the

sense of obligation,” and, I take it, supposing that this “we” arises

from joint commitment.

We need to distinguish two versions of (3). Suppose the child

plays spontaneously with the adult in the absence of joint commit-

ment. Why is this a case of joint intentional collaboration, not just a

case of each merely playing alongside the other? In (Bratman 2014),

I propose (roughly) that in shared intentional activity each publicly

and interdependently intends the joint activity and that it go by

way of relevant intentions of each, mutual responsiveness, and

meshing subplans. This structure of intentions of each constitutes

their joint/shared intention so to act. Applied to our present

case, this explains a kind of “self-regulative pressure from” the

“we,” since both the child and the adult can reason instrumentally

concerning what is needed for their jointly intended playing

together. For example, the child can reason: “As one of the interde-

pendent elements of our shared intention, I intend that we play

together; for us to play together, I need to give him the ball; so I

will.” In this sense, (1) ensures a version of (3). But this weak ver-

sion of (3) simply involves instrumental reasoning concerning the

jointly intended end of playing together; it need not involve a sense

of obligation to the other. The child can reason instrumentally con-

cerning this jointly intended end of playing together without think-

ing that she owes it to the adult to give him the ball.

In contrast, in a strong version of (3) the self-regulation

involves a sense of obligation to the other. And Tomasello’s

thought is that joint commitment ensures this strong version of

(3), and so thereby (4).

Given that joint commitment involves joint intentional collab-

oration, joint commitment ensures the weak version of (3 ). But

why does adding the cited web of assurances ensure the strong

version of (3), one that is not ensu red simply by joint intentiona l

collaboration?

Perhaps Tomasello’s view is simply that it is a feature of our

human psychology that joint intentional collaboration that is ini-

tiated by such a web of assurances does in fact induce a

sense of obligation; so, when such a web precedes and initiates

joint intentional collaboration, it transforms the weak “we” of

joint intentional collaboration into the strong, sense-of-obligation-

loaded “we.” This would change the order of explanation and

appeal directly to a connection between (2) and (4), and then

thereby explain the connection between (2) and the strong version

of (3). More importantly, it raises a further question. Does the

structure of joint intentional collaboration that is initiated by

such a web of assurances induce a sense of obligation by virtue

of the role of shared intentionality in that structure? Well, it does

not do this solely by virtue of the role of intentional joint collab-

oration: that only ensures a weak “we.” Instead, it does this in part

by virtue of the web of assurances. It is that web of assurances that

is doing the work in going from a weak to a strong “we.” But such

assurances need not themselves be jointly intentional activities;

and they can occur in the absence of relevant jointly intentional

activities (think of a case of insincere assurances). So, what is

undergirding (4) involves a crucial element that is separable

from intentional collaborative activity. Is this compatible with

the idea underlying the shared intentionality hypothesis?

The joy of obligation: Human cultural

worldviews can enhance the rewards

of meeting obligations

Emma E. Buchtel

The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.

[email protected]

https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/persons/emma-ellen-kathrina-buchtel

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002607, e63

Abstract

Is it particularly human to feel coerced into fulfilling moral obli-

gations, or is it particularly human to enjoy them? I argue for the

importance of taking into account how culture promotes proso-

cial behavior, discussing how Confucian heritage culture

enhances the satisfaction of meeting one’s obligations.

Why do humans fulfill moral obligations? Tomasello persuasively

argues that humans’ unusual ability to form a sense of

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interdependence with others, therefore identifying with the group

and its norms, allows children to develop a sense of obligation to

follow cooperative social norms. Tomasello defines these obligations

primarily in terms of their “coerciv e” power, which force us to sub-

ordinate selfish desires to the demands of the group, supported by

social pressure and self-punishing guilt. Curiously (given

Tomasello’s groundbreaking work, e.g., Tomasello 2016b;

Tomasello et al. 1993), culture plays a small role in this article,

beyond providing a group identity and, presumably, some of the

content of the norms that become obligatory. In this commentary,

I argue for the importance of studying the positive experience of ful-

filling obligations, and the role of culture in enhancing it, to under-

standing why humans adopt moral behavior.

In our ratcheted up societies (Tomasello et al. 1993), culture is

a key element in creating prosocial norms and making it likely

that we will fulfill them. Culture determines the content of

moral obligations (e.g., Miller & Bersoff 1992; Miller et al.

1990); consists of complex systems of beliefs and practices that

uphold and spread cooperation (e.g., Norenzayan et al. 2016);

changes the experience of fulfilling one’s obligations (Buchte l

et al. 2018); and perhaps even changes whether or not absolute

impermissibility is a central aspect of morality (Buchtel et al.

2015). Although cultural influences necessarily build on children’s

initial propensities to learn social norms, the content of our par-

ticular normative cultures has enormous influence over whether

and why we follow those norms. To understand why humans ful-

fill obligations and responsibilities to one another, we must study

how specific cultures sustain those obligations.

For example, even moral impermissibility may be a more cen-

tral feature of Western concepts of morality than Chinese ones,

suggesting that the “coercive” nature of moral obligation might

not be the key universal human feature to be explained

(Anscombe 1958). In our study of Chinese lay prototypes of

immoral behaviors, we found a puzzling disconnect between

what was acknowledged to be most harmful (e.g., killing people)

and what was called immoral; the Chinese word for immoral was

most applicable to behaviors that were particularly uncultured or

uncivilized, such as spitting in the street or disrespecting parents,

and less applicable to criminally harmful behaviors such as steal-

ing or killing (Buchtel et al. 2015). This suggests that the catego-

ries of antisocial behaviors are differently organized in Confucian

heritage cultures than they are in Western heritage cultures, where

instead behaviors have been divided into those that are impermis-

sible (very harmful) versus not (Buchtel et al. 2015 ). Historically,

morality in China has been based on the teaching of Confucian

virtues such as benevolence and propriety, while criminals – pre-

sumably beyond the motivational reach of virtue – were dealt with

through the criminal law system (Bakken 2000). Rather than

emphasizing moral absolutism, Confucianism is instead described

as a form of virtue ethics (Angle & Slote 2013), according to

which morality guides character development so that the virtuous

can respond appropriately to different situations.

Similarly, conflict between the self and group needs is a classi-

cally Western concern, but not a central theme in Confucianism

(Buchtel et al. 2018). Instead, the obligations, duties, and responsi-

bilities associated with one’s social role are perceived as an oppor-

tunity to realize and ennoble the self (Shun & Wong 2004).

Consider the experience of not breaking one’sobligations– but

meeting them. What allows us to feel joy by being a moral person?

We’ve found that adult participants who are more influenced by

Confucian heritage cultures (vs. Western heritage cultures) are

more likely to associate an obligation to help others with positive

emotions and also with a sense of personal agency (Buchtel et al.

2018; see also Miller et al. 2011; Tripathi et al. 2018). It is likely

that Confucian heritage moral cultures strengthen the experience

of intra- and interpersonal rewards for responding to what others

think one ought to do. This current cultural difference has strong

parallels with philosophical differences between these two heritage

cultures: A Confucian admiration of those who fulfill obligations

sincerely (detailed in contemporary philosophers’ discussion of

Confucian role ethics, e.g., Ames & Rosemont 2014

), versus a

Kantian concern about avoiding the coercive nature of such obliga-

tions. However, along with the cultural difference, we also found

surprisingly strong evidence that Euro-Canadians also experienced

both positive emotion and a sense of personal agency when they

felt more obligation to help, suggesting that fulfilling duties may

be universally rewarding.

The role of cultural evolution in the creation of cooperative

humans and societies is a new and burgeoning research area

(e.g., N orenzayan et al. 2016). Like the focus on guilt and punish-

ment in the target article, much of the focus in cultural evolution

has been on how the sanctioning of norm violators motivates

cooperation and obedience to social norms. Yet, the above

research suggests that following norms generates a sense of agency

and positive emotions (Buchtel et al. 2018). Similarly, the pursuit

of eudaemonic activities such as prosocial behavior has been

linked to reward responses and increased well-being (e.g., Steger

et al. 2008; Telzer et al. 2014). Although moral behavior is

undoubtedly encouraged by punishment for norm violations,

we also need to know more about how cultures enhance the

rewards experienced when we meet prosocial norms.

Culture is a crucial feature of what enables humans to willingly

follow social norms. The psychological or invisible cultural envi-

ronment – values, philosophies, religion – has, because of

humans’ unique ability to create and learn culture, become a

vital tool in our historically endowed arsenal of survival mecha-

nisms. Assuming that the human ability to create and absorb cul-

ture is a key feature of human evolutionary success, then

knowledge of how different cultures encourage prosocial behavior

is essential to understanding how human children develop a pro-

pensity towards goodness.

Tomasello’s tin man of moral

obligation needs a heart

Jeremy I. M. Carpendale

and Charlie Lewis

Psychology Department, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6

Canada and

Psychology Department, Lancaster University, Fylde College,

Lancaster, LA1 4YW United Kingdom.

[email protected]

https://www.sfu.ca/psychology/about/people/profiles/jcarpend.html

[email protected]c.uk

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/people-profiles/charlie-lewis

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002462, e64

Abstract

In place of Tomasello’s explanation for the source of moral obli-

gation, we suggest that it develops from the concern for others

already implicit in the human developmental system. Mutual

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affection and caring make the development of communication

and thinking possible. Humans develop as persons within such

relationships and this develops into respect and moral obligation.

Tomasello has a great talent for selecting crucially important top-

ics and carefully exploring them with brilliant experimental work

in collaboration with his group of talented colleagues. He pro-

poses collaborative interaction as a social interactive medium in

which obligation develops because others are recognized as

equals, and so equally deserving, and this leads to mutual respect.

The second step is to move beyond responsibility to one ’s partic-

ular collaborative partners and to extend obligation to one’s social

group, as internalized pressure from a collective “we.”

We support Tomasello’s goal of explaining the developmental

and evolutionary origins of the human sense of moral obligation

within an interactive framework. Although his approach is social

in the sense of focusing on individuals who interact, this already

presup poses rat her than explains the development of those individ-

uals. A more thoroughly social appr oa ch from a process-r elational

perspective proposes that persons develop within interaction

(Carpendale et al. 2013; Carpendale & Lewis 2004; 2006; 2015a;

2015b).

Instead of attempting to explain the emergence of a sense of

obligation later in development, concern for others is already

implicit in the typical human developmental system with its ori-

gins in mutual affection and caring. This is necessary to start the

developmental process early in the infant’s life, as seen in frequent

dyadic exchanges and the emergence of intense attachments by

6 months of age. Humans develop as persons within relationships

of mutual affection, and this transforms to mutual respect in the

sense of treating those others with care. Morality is based on

mutual affection (Piaget 1932/1965). Treating others as someone,

not something (Spaemann 2006), is already embedded in the

structure of communicative interaction that infants experience

in development – the seeds for mutual respect (Carpendale

2018; Habermas 1990).

It is because human infants are born relatively helpless that

there is so much potential for their development. A strong posi-

tive emotional connection is a foundation for the human develop-

mental system in which infants develop as persons, and learn to

communicate, which makes thinking possible. Within their

intense social emotional relationships, infants first learn to com-

municate through coordinating their interaction with others. Such

communication is the basis of language and results in the devel-

opment of human thinking. All of this requires the social-

emotional cradle in which humans develop. Moral obligation is

not the result of realizing that others are equals and therefore

should be treated with respect. Instead, it is a natural outcome

of mutual affection and understanding. This caring and concern

for others is what later develops into a sense of obligation, first

to those close and, later, extended to others.

There is a missing link in Tomasello’s expl anation. He sug-

gests that, in collaborating with others, children see them as

equal and so equally deserving. But this does n ot explain why

they feel obliged to them. We don’t add moral oblig ation later

in development – it is already implicit in the human develop-

mental system as a result of the nature of early relationships.

Infants are treated as persons, as participants in interaction. It

is the product of treating others as persons and responding to

them in everyday activity. Our inte rpretation of the research

showing that 3-year-olds fee l obligation to those they i nteract

with collaboratively is that children have experienced obligation

within the co mmunicative i nteraction they grow up in.

Conversation is a special case of collaborative interaction in

general, as Grice ( 1975) suggested, which i s extended to the

research settings involving collaboration. In conversation, fa iling

to respond to ot hers is morally accountable (Turnbull 2003).

Some children may occasionally be prompted by ca regivers to

respond if they fail to do so on their own, but we suggest that

this is u nlikely to be the primary way that they learn about obli-

gation in conversation. Instead children pick up on others’

expectations of a response within many daily interactions.

Gradually, children begin to recognize the consequences for oth-

ers’ feelings of not responding to them.

Tomasello’s second step involves conformity, which he sees as

a requirem ent for membership in a cultural group. He suggests

that individuals feel social pressure as obligation, but we are not

convinced that this can be a complete explanation for moral obli-

gation. People sometimes feel a moral obligation to disobey the

culture’s (and our parents’) ways of doing things if they are

believed to be wrong and need to be changed. Tomasello does

not explain this. For him, children buy into cultural norms with-

out evaluating them and uphold such norms because of what oth-

ers will think about them. But this is just conformity. It does not

get us to right and wrong. Individuals may disagree with and

oppose such norms leading to change. Although conformity is

a dimension of human social life, Tomasello’s approach is incom-

plete and leads to moral relativism. It cannot explain how the

Greta Thunbergs of every generation challenge the status quo so

early in their development.

We suggest that the second step Tomasello proposes beyond

individuals’ obligation to their collaborative partners is not just

one step. Instead, it is a gradual process of including more per-

spectives on the moral issue in question, beginning with those

in close relationships and extending to one ’s cultural group. But

this can be further extended to other groups and to other animals.

Tomasello proposes taking a social approa ch to explaining the

source of moral obligation, but there are three problems with his

argument. First, there is still an implicit separa tio n of emotions

and cognition. Second, the process he describes begins with individ-

uals who then cooperat e and so feel social pressur e as obligation, but

we don’t alway s feel obligation as onerous. Third, there is insufficient

explanation of how, or why, obligation emerges so late in develop-

ment. Mutual enjoyment in intera c tion makes human communica-

tion possible and then language and forms of thinking based on

language. Caring and mutual affection are embedded in the structur e

of the human developmen tal sy s tem. These str ong emotional bonds

are the seed for mutual respe ct, which is already ther e in communi-

ca tion, and develops increasingly into moral obligation.

Intuitive theories inform children’s

beliefs about intergroup obligation

Lisa Chalik

Yeshiva University, Stern College for Women, Department of Psychology,

New York, NY 10016.

[email protected] http://www.developingmindslab.com

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002516, e65

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Abstract

In addition to emerging from children’s direct experiences with

collaborative partners and groups, children’s beliefs about obli-

gation also arise from a process of intuitive theory-building in

early childhood. On this account, it is possible for at least

some of children’s beliefs to emerge in the absence of specific

experiences where obligations are held among fellow members

of a group “we.”

In the target article, Tomasello argues that children initially view

obligations as holding among collaborative partners, then they

extend this knowledge to collaborative and cultural groups during

the preschool years. Overall, this is a convincing argument that

makes sense given the extensive literature on when and how chil-

dren develop an understanding of norms.

Yet, the argument that children’s sense of obligation is depen-

dent on their developing concept of “we” implies that it is child-

ren’s own direct experience in social groups that drives all of their

moral understanding. Clearly, children’s firsthand experiences

with the social groups in their environment influence a range of

social category-based processes, including obligation. Yet, this

argument overlooks the possibility that at least some of children’s

beliefs about groups exist as part of a more abstract framework of

how social groups function, beyond children’s own experiences.

For example, Tomasello reviews a great deal of work showing

that preschool-aged children show preferential treatment for

in-group over out-group members across a range of experimental

paradigms (Fehr et al. 2008; Misch et al. 2014;Over2018;Over

et al. 2016). These findings are not trivial and provide strong sup-

port for the suggestion that children’s beliefs about obligation are

embedded within their understanding of social groups. But they

do not disentangle children’s own affective biases toward the

groups they have encountered in the world from their broader

understanding of how social groups function in general.

Across development, children build intuitive theories –

abstract, domain-specific, causal-explanatory frameworks – of

how the world works (Wellman & Gelman 1992). In the social

world, children’s intuitive theories involve both (a) what social

group members are like, and (b) how social group members act

toward one another (Rhodes 2013). Importantly, these theories

are normative in nature – they involve not just descriptions of

how group members act, but also prescriptions of how group

members are supposed to act (Haward et al. 2018; Prasada &

Dillingham 2009). In other words, children’s intuitive theories

establish the obligations by which group members are believed

to be bound . To that end, by the preschool years, children view

moral obligation as shaped by group membership: They think

that people are more likely to harm out-group members than

in-group members (Chalik & Rhodes 2014; 2018; Chalik et al.

2014; Rhodes 2012), and that people will protect in-group mem-

bers over out-group members from harm (Chalik & Rhodes

2018). Furthermore, as soon as children receive input to suggest

that a given behavior is morally relevant, they spontaneously

expect that behavior to play out according to group boundaries,

even if they have had no experience with the particular behavior

or groups in question (Chalik & Dunham 2020). Importantly, in

contrast to most of the in-group preferences documented in the

target article, these findings have all come from tests of children’s

third-person reasoning. In these third-party paradigms, children’s

judgments cannot be based on any personal biases that they hold

in favor of their own social groups, since children are not mem-

bers of the groups they are reasoning about. Thus, these findings

do not seem to rely on a sense of “we”–rather, they depend on a

sense of “they.” This sense is abstract in nature, involving child-

ren’s beliefs about how groups are supposed to function in the

world, rather than whatever children have actually experienced

with the specific groups in their environment.

This possibility need not be in direct opposition to the one

presented by Tomasello. It is certainly possible that children

could build their understanding of obligation from both their

experiences in collaborative partnerships and their intuitive theo-

ries of how social groups function. Yet, if both of these proposals

are true, then an open question remains: When and how do chil-

dren incorporate their specific experiences into their more

abstract expectations of the world? The relation between child-

ren’s person al biases, as documented in first-person work, and

their abstract expectations of the world, as documented in third-

person work, remains largely unexplored, and will be an impor-

tant area for future research.

An additional issue raised by the intuitive theories account

regards the time-course of children’s developing understanding of

obligation. Tomasello reviews a great deal of work suggesting that

it is only after age 3 that children have a true sense of “we.” Yet,

the strong conclusion that children do not incorporate social

groups into their beliefs about moral obligation until this age is pre-

mature. If children hold an intuitive theory by which social groups

mark moral obligation, and notions of obligation are thus embed-

ded in representations of social groups, then children may begin to

develop these beliefs as soon as they start to recognize that social

distinctions exist in the world. A great deal of work now shows

that infants are sensitive to social groupings within the first year

of life (Bar-Haim et al. 2006; Kinzler et al. 2007; Quinn et al.

2002), and that toddlers can represent novel social groups, given

the right input (Diesendruck & Deblinger-Tangi 2014;Rhodes

et al. 2018). Furthermore, infants and toddlers do appear to have

different expectations about how people will interact with one

another, depending on group membership (Bian et al. 2018;Jin

& Baillargeon 2017;Tingetal.2019). This evidence is somewhat

limited, and there is undoubtedly much about children’sunder-

standing of obligation that continues to develop beyond age 3;

still, to some extent, it seems likely that children begin to hold

these concepts within the first three years of life.

Thus, the argument that children’s beliefs about oblig ation

arise from their experiences in collaborative partnerships and

groups is a strong one. Yet, it is incomplete without also consid-

ering the intuitive theories of social groups that children hold

regardless of their direct experiences, as well as the social group-

based judgments made by infants and toddlers.

Who are “we” and why are we

cooperating? Insights from

social psychology

Margaret S. Clark, Brian D. Earp

and Molly J. Crockett

Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8306.

[email protected]

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https://clarkrelationshiplab.yale.edu/people/margaret-clark

[email protected] https://oxford.academia.edu/BrianDEarp

molly.cr[email protected] http://www.crockettlab.org

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002528, e66

Abstract

Tomasello argues in the target article that a sense of moral obli-

gation emerges from the creation of a collaborative “we” moti-

vating us to fulfill our cooperative duties. We suggest that “we”

takes many forms, entailing different obligations, depending

on the type (and underlying functions) of the relationship(s)

in question. We sketch a framework of such types, functions,

and obligations to guide future research in our commentary.

Drawing on developmental, comparative, and philosophical per-

spectives, Tomasello gives an account of moral obligation,

which he argues has received “almost total neglect” from psychol-

ogists. We agree with Tomasello that a sense of obligation arises

from cooperative agreements between humans, often functioning

as a powerful “stick” to prevent behavior that would lead to one’s

own guilt or partner resentment. In fact, psychologists focusing

on dyadic and group behavior have long discussed such means

of prioritizing “we” over “me” in human societies: Kelley’s

(1982) discussion of transformations-of-motivation from individ-

ual to shared concerns is a key example. The importance of coop-

erative norms and the risk of resentment and guilt implied by

breaking them also have been emphasized by researchers such

as Walster et al. (1978) who traced shifts from “me” to “we”

and identified resultant obligations as part of their equity theory.

Others have note d that moral judgments of the self and other are

caused by meeting or failing to meet cooperative expectations, the

nature of which often vary by relational context (e.g., Bloom 2011;

Clark & Boothby 2013; Rai & Fiske 2011).

Different relationship types have been distinguished in terms

of the adaptive functions they serve (Bugental 2000; Clark &

Mills 1979, 2012; Fiske 1992); the demands people place on coop-

erative partners depend on the origins and nature of their inter-

dependence (Bugental 2000; Clark & Mills 1979). We suggest

that taking into account who “we” are (in Tomasello’s sense), as

well as “why” and “how” we are cooperating based on the func-

tions normatively served within our relations hip(s), will be crucial

for making progress in the social psychology of moral obligation.

Consider Wendy, who could easily provide a free hot meal to a

hungry young child named Peter, but neglects to do so. Has she

breached a moral obligation? It depen ds on the nature of the rela-

tionship between them. If Wendy is Peter’s mother, the answer is

probably yes (barr ing unusual circumstances). If Wendy is the

unrelated owner of a local restaurant, the answer is probably

no. Or consider John, who fails to pay his driver, Susan, for a

ride to the airport. If Susan is his taxi driver, he likely has

breached an obligation. If Susan is his sister or spouse, however,

he likely has not.

These examples highlight a difference between two relation-

ship types described in the literature: communal and exchange

(Clark & Mills 1979, 2012; see also Fiske 1992). Communal rela-

tionships are often exemplified by friends, family, and romantic

partners. In these relationships, people (normatively) assume a

special responsibility for one another’s welfare. They track each

other’s needs and desires (Clark et al. 1989), note the responsive-

ness of the other to their own needs (Clark et al. 1998

), and offer

non-contingent support as necessary to promote partner welfare

(Clark et al. 1987). Failure to offer such support reduces liking,

elicits hurt feelings (Clark & Mills 1979; Lemay et al. 2010),

and, we expect, triggers negative moral judgments (e.g., resentment).

By contrast, failure to directly compensate the other for needs-

responsive support in a communal relat ionship typically does not

cause such negative responses (as with John/Susan above).

Compare this to exchange relationships, often exemplified by

casual acquaintances or customers/sellers. In these relationships,

needs typically are not tracked (unless for purposes of selling or

exchanging), but the other’s contributions to joint tasks are

tracked (Clark et al. 1989; Clark 1984). Goods and services are

(normatively) provided on a contingent basis, and costly help is

generally not offered in non-emergency situations (Clark et al.

1987). Here, repaying debts and willingness to accept payments

leads to enhanced liking (Clark & Mills 1979) and does not elicit

negative judgments (McGraw & Tetlock 2005), whereas failure to

pay likely would be judged as morally objectionable (and refusal

to accept payment would seem strange and uncomfortable, if

not immoral ). The degree of perceived wrongfulness of an action

likewise depends on relational context (Simpson & Laham 2015;

Simpson et al. 2016; Tepe & Adymi-Karakulak 2018).

Communal and exchange relationships serve different func-

tions. Bugental (2000) proposed some overlapping functions

and added others as shown in Table 1. She ties each one to a spe-

cific adaptive goal or recurrent coordination problem faced by our

species.

Everyday relationships serve one or more of these functions to

varying degrees in different contexts. For example, a parent-infant

relationship normatively serves the attachment and hierarchy

functions across almost every context, but not the mating, reci-

procity, or coalition functions. Teammates are expected to serve

the coalition function, with a captain also serving the hierarchy

function, but in most societies the captain normatively does not

serve the mating, attachment, or reciprocity functions with

other team members.

Feelings of moral obligation (and judgments of blame for fail-

ing to uphold such obligations) often will be specific to the func-

tions that are central to the relationship at hand. So, a parent

would be heavily blamed (and would likely feel guilt) for failing

to serve the attachment function with their infant, but a captain

would not be so blamed (nor would likely feel guilt) for failing

to serve this function with a teammate, and so forth.

Two final points regarding the importance of asking who “we”

are. Tomasello focuses on “we” relations that are voluntarily

entered into by individuals who regard each other as relevantly

equal in terms of obligations, rights, and power; but the

parent-infant example highlights that at least some relationships

are unequal in these respects and may be non-voluntarily entered

into. Indeed, some “we” relations are imposed on people by the

situations in which they find themselves, some of which may be

functional for one party to the relationship but not the other

(see Kelley et al. 2003).

Second, Tomasello focuses on negative judgments resulting

from obligation-failures (the sticks). It will be fruitful to consider

the personal and interpersonal rewards to be gained by

obligation-fulfillment (the carrots) as well. Previous work suggests

that serving relationship functions in ways that are desired and

which exceed normative expectations will disrupt smooth, habit-

ual interdependent routines and will likely elicit positive emotions

(Berscheid & Ammazalorso 2001). Might moral praiseworthiness

judgments be similarly elicited?

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To summarize, the varied nature of relational contexts and

functions shape moral judgments (Bloom 2011; Clark &

Boothby 2013; Haidt & Baron 1996; Rai & Fiske 2011), as well

as many other psychological phenomena (Reis 2008; Clark et al.

2017). Future work should consider who “we” are, taking into

account (1) the different functional and normative bases of differ-

ent relationship types, (2) both voluntary and non-voluntary

forms of interdependence, and (3) both positive and negative

moral judgments.

Integrating perspectives: How the

development of second-personal

competence lays the foundation for a

second-personal morality

John Corbit and Chris Moore

Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Dalhousie University Life

Sciences Centre, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4R2.

[email protected]; [email protected]

https://esdldalhousie.wixsite.com/esdl

doi:10.1017/S0140525X1900236X, e67

Abstract

The integration of first-, second-, and third-personal informa-

tion within joint intentional collaboration provides the founda-

tion for broad-based second-personal morality. We offer two

additions to this framework: a description of the developmental

process through which second-personal competence emerges

from early triadic interactions, and empirical evidence that col-

laboration with a concrete goal may provide an essential focal

point for this integrative process.

As Tomasello highlights in the target article, a key distinguishing

feature of human collaboration is the ability to form a second-

personal agent “we,” which regulates “I” and “you” in our com-

mitments towards achieving a joint goal. Collaboration character-

ized by second-personal agency is the foundation for the

development of a broad-based second-personal morality of

fairness and mutual respect. Further, through engaging in joint

intentional collaborative interactions, children come to under-

stand the self-other equivalen ce of “I” and “you,” thereby provid-

ing the foundation for individuals to relate to each other as equals.

Collaboration structured by second-personal agency appears to be

unique to humans, and the apprehension of perspectival equiva-

lence involved in this form of social understanding may well

explain why humans also uniquely show a commitment to treat-

ing collaborators fairly (Tomasello et al. 2005).

We have two goals in this commentary on the target article. First,

we intend to apply a developmental account of second-personal

agency focused on the role of triadic interactions (Moore &

Barresi 2017) to complement Tomasello’s developmental account

of second-personal morality. Second, we highlight recent findings

that uncover the social contextual factors within joint intentional

collabora tion that activa te second-personal mor al concerns.

Whereas Tomasello argues for a fundamental role of joint

intentional collaboration, his account is relatively silent on how a

joint intentional schema comes about developmentally. Following

Moore and Barresi (2017; see also Barresi & Moore 1996), we pro-

pose that it is through the triadic interactions arising in the second

half of the first year that children gain the social experience neces-

sary to form the joint intentional schemas that Tomasello argues

are essential for second-personal morality. Triadic interactions

contain second-person information of various forms (see Moore

& Barresi 2017), but we suggest that it is through experiencing tri-

adic interactions whereby infants and interactive partners share

intentional orientations to objects and states of affairs that infants

are able to coordinate their own first-person intentional orientation

with their third-person perspective on the intentional orientation

of their partner (Moore & Barresi 2017). It is this experience of

shared intentionality within triadic interactions that allows children

to form a joint intentional schema. The ability to form a joint

intentional schema allows children to engage in the type of dual-

level collaboration wherein, as Tomasello argues, children come

to recognize the self-other equivalence from which a second-

person morality develops (Tomasello 2019).

A central argument in Tomasello’s target article account is that

a sense of fairness develops through joint intentional collaboration.

This preference for fairness emerges through the formation of a

joint-agentive “we,” which is embodied by mutual action towards

a common goal. Within this form of dual-level collaboration, chil-

dren come to recognize self-other equivalence with their collabo-

rative partners. To date, much of the evidence that collaboration

increases children’s concern for fairness has come in the context

of collaborating to earn resources (Corbit et al. 2017; Hamann

et al. 2011; Warneken et al. 2011). However, when children collab-

orate to earn resources, there are several social contextual factors

that may activate fairness concerns; working to earn resources,

working to achieve a common goal, and enjoying a positive social

exchange. Thus, although Tomasello convincingly argues for the

importance of joint intentional collaboration in the target article,

parsing the influence of these factors will provide a better under-

standing of the psychological processes through which joint inten-

tional collaboration fosters fairness concerns.

In order to systematically investigate the influenc e of each of

these factors, Corbit ( 2019) assessed children’s(3–5 years old)

sharing before and after engaging in three collaborative contexts:

achieving a shared goal of earning resources, achieving a shared

goal independent of resources, and playing a social game.

Children increased sharing to collaborators with whom they

had accomplished a shared concrete goal, independently of

Table 1. (Clark et al.) Relationship functions, adapted from Bugental (2000).

Function Adaptive Goal/Coordination Problem to be Solved

Mating Finding and maintaining sexual partners; ultimately,

producing and ensuring the survival of offspring

Attachment Ensuring that a person’s well-being is secure, without

strings attached to the giving or receiving of support;

maintaining safety; encouraging learning

Reciprocity Coordinating cooperative behavior between people with

similar (or equal) status, power, or responsibility

Hierarchy Coordinating cooperative behavior between people with

different (unequal) status, power, or responsibility

Coalition Forming and maintaining a group identity with

(potentially unrelated) others working toward common

goals

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whether the resources they shared were earned together or

obtained outside of the collaborative context. Importantly, sharing

increased only when children collaborated towards a concrete

goal, and not when the goal of their collaborative interaction

was to play a social game. An important question that emerges

from these findings is why might a concrete goal increase sharing,

whereas a primarily social goal does not?

Joint intentional collaboration towards a concrete goal may

serve a unique role in fostering a second-personal moral obliga-

tion. When a shared goal is to play a social game there is less

need for mutual (second-personal) regulation of the role for “I”

and “you.” This is because the goal of playing a social game can

be accomplished in a myriad of ways; so as long as partners remain

engaged, their social goal will be achieved. When there is a con-

crete goal, and “we” are dependent on one another to achieve

that goal, then “I” must regulate “you” (and vice versa), guided

by the shared intention “we” have. Indeed, when children collab-

orate towards a concrete goal, over repeated iterations they are able

to form role ideals that structure the way each collaborator must

fulfill their role towards achieving the joint goal. If the goal that

“we” have is to engage socially, then the role that “you” and “I”

play is secondary to that of the second-personal agentive “we.”

An obligation to treat collaborators fairly necessitates that

“you” and “I” are recognized as equivalent, yet distinct, agents

currently engaged in shared intentionality. Fairness is intrinsically

a relative process where I compare my stake to yours, and “we” as

equivalent agents can agree on a mutually satisfactory outcome.

We propose that in collaboration where the role “I” and “you”

must be mutually regulated by “we” in order to achieve a shared

concrete goal, the resulting commitment to mutually satisfactory

(“fair”) outcomes will be greater than when “we” is the focal point

of an interaction and the individual roles “you” and “ I ” play are

secondary. Thus, a shared concrete goal may provide the focal

point within joint intentional collaboration to facilitate the inte-

gration of first-, second-, and third-personal information provid-

ing a foundation for a broad-based second-personal morality.

Psychological consequences of the

normativity of moral obligation

Stephen Darwall

Department of Philosophy, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8306.

stephen.darw[email protected]

https://campuspress.yale.edu/stephendarwall/

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002437, e68

Abstract

An adequate moral psychology of obligation must bear in mind

that although the “sense of obligation” is psychological, wha t it

is a sense of, moral obliga tion itself, is not. It is irreducibly norma-

tive. I argue, therefore, that the “we” whose demands the sense of

obligation presupposes must be an ideal ra ther than an actual “we.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I broadly agree with Tomasello’s target

article. I am a moral philosopher, however, not a psychologist.

Still, even if moral philosophy is an a priori discipline at the

foundational level where I tend to work, it cannot avoid giving

some hostages to psychological fortune. And mine does so in

spades, since I argue that central aspects of deontic morality –

obligation, right, wrong, and so forth – are conceptually related

to the psychological states P. F. Strawson called “reactive attitudes”

through which we hold people morally accountable (Darwall

2006; 2013b; 2013c; Strawson 1968). So, it has been enormously

exciting, and something of a relief, to find confirmation in

Tomasello’s work for the second-personal psychology of mutual

accountability.

Psychologists tend to identify “prosocial” motivation with

sympathetic concern and the desire to benefit. As Tomasello

shows, however, what is essential to distinctively human forms

of cooperation is not a desire for others’ goods, but a deontic

motivation: a “sense of obligation,” including the desire to treat

others fairly and with respect. This is a motive of right rather

than good. It is conceptually related to what can be warrantedly

demanded of us. The very idea of moral obligation, I argue, is

the concept of what we can justifiably be held accountable for

doing, what it would be blameworthy to fail to do without excuse

(Darwall 2006; 2013b; 2013c).

Although the “sense of obligation” is psychological, what it is a

sense of is decidedly not, any more than mathematic intuition,

clearly a psychological phenomenon, concerns something psycho-

logical. The object of the latter is an a priori mathematical struc-

ture, and that of the former is an essentially normative one. This

fundamental fact has signi ficant consequences that need to be

borne in mind.

Tomasello distinguishes two different stages at which the sense

of obligation enters, both ontogenetically and phylogenetically.

Whether in collaborative play in early childhood or the obligate

collaborative foraging of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, an initial

stage involves a sense of obligation to individual partners as hav-

ing equal claims to the collaborative benefits and to respect as an

equal partner. A second stage involves wider cooperation within a

cultural group and a sense of obligation, less to particular individ-

uals, than “objectively” or “period.”

The psychological, as well as philosophical, engine driving the

sense of obligation in both cases, for Tomasello, is that joint under-

takings create a “we” with the standing to make demands of collab-

orating parties. When individuals cooperate voluntarily, their “we”

can make demands of each that ratifies claims the other has on

them as an equal partner, underwriting the parties’ sense of obliga-

tions to one another. When the cooperative scheme is more diffuse

and less voluntary, as with a cultural group, the “we”s demands are

not on behalf of individuals. The resulting sense of obligation is not

to anyone individually. They are on behalf of shared cultural values

that inform a sense of

“objective” obligation.

Now, as we noted, obligation is a normative, rather than a psy-

chological (or sociological) phenomenon. It follows that any

“we”s expectations or demands can generate obligations only if

they are justified demands that it would be blameworthy to ignore

or flout. It is important to see, moreover, that being culpable can-

not be understood in terms of what any actual “we,” whether vol-

untary or implicit, actually blames on pain of robbing obligation

of its normativity. What is blameworthy is what there is justifica-

tion to blame. I argue, therefore, that blame involves a standpoint

of a presupposed moral community of second-personally compe-

tent persons – that is, moral agents or subjects, as such (Darwall

2006; 2013b; 2013c). It presupposes an ideal “ we.”

No de facto group can create obligations by default. Individuals

become obligated to one another through agreements only because

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of a background requirement on all moral agents to keep agree-

ments (other things being equal). We can become obligated to

one another through agreements only if it would be blameworthy

to violate them without excuse, where this consists in there being

justification for demands (and blame for violators) from a presup-

posed “we” of any (second-personally competent) person. The

inescapable point is that both “second-personal morality” and

“‘objective’ morality,” as Tomasello calls them, presuppose moral-

ity in the intrinsically normative sense. They presuppose what we

might call “objective morality without the scare quotes.”

Here are two reflections of this fact. First, voluntarily agreeing

to something can obligate one only if a would-be partner’s forcing

you to do as they wish without your agreement would be wrong

and would wrong you. This background moral fact is presup-

posed. The wrongness of forced “cooperation” cannot completely

derive from the demands of any de facto group, obviously not

from a not-yet-constituted group, and not from any more encom-

passing de facto group, either.

Second, Tomasello notes experimental evidence that young

children tend to equalize the benefits of collaboration. It seems

implausible that they generally agree to this in advance or

“write it into” the contract constituting their “we.” Much more

likely is that there is a moral presumption of equal treatment

that is presupposed in the phenomenon of cooperation itself

(Darwall 2006). Tomasello hypothesizes “self-other equivalence”

and that the children are “equal causal forces.” But why suppose

that this is generally true de facto? The relevant equivalence is

irreducibly normative and moral, not empirical. In the relevant

sense, it holds even if (say, because one is ambidextrous and the

other is not), one is actually capable of playing both roles and

the other is not, or if one contributes more than the other in a

strictly causal sense.

Obligation at zero acquaintance

David Dunning

, Detlef Fetchenhauer

and Thomas Schlösser

Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 and

Institute for Sociology and Social Psychology, University at Cologne, 50931

Köln, Germany.

[email protected]

https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/people/faculty/ddunning.html

[email protected]

https://www.iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/en/institute/staff/f/prof-dr-detlef-

fetchenhauer/

[email protected]

https://www.iss-wiso.uni-koeln.de/de/institut/personen/s/pd-dr-thomas-

schloesser/

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002498, e69

Abstract

Social obligation begins far before people establish explicit coop-

erative relationships. Research on trust suggests that people feel

obligated to trust other people even at zero acquaintance, thus

trusting complete strangers even though they privately expect

to be exploited. Such obligations promote mutually beneficial

behavior among strangers and likely help people build goodwill

needed for more long-lasting relationships.

We resonate with Tomasello’s observation that much of human

cooperation is driven by something akin to obligation. Pro-social

behavior is not so much an act of “giving” as it is of “giving in”–

to social rules, roles, and duties (see Cain et al. 2014).

We not only find much agreement, we suggest that the scope

of his analysis applies far wider than Tomasello asserts. He pro-

poses that other-directed obligations arise when people enter

explicit collaborative activities with shared goals and joint

intentions.

We, however, would argue that obligation governs human

behavior much sooner than that. For communities to thrive and

develop, their members must honor certain rules and oblig ations

no matter how anonymous, transient, or minimal their supposed

relationships might be (Henrich et al. 2010).

Work in our labs on interpersonal trust directly demonstrates

the obligatory nature of pro-social behavior even at zero acquain-

tance (for reviews, see Dunning et al. 2019; Fetchenhauer et al.

2017). In laboratory trust games, we give participants $5 and

tell them they can either keep the money or hand it over to a com-

plete strang er whom they will never meet and who will never meet

them. Importantly, if they hand over the money, we will inflate it

to $20 and give the stranger their own choice. They can keep the

$20 or give $10 back to the participant. Such a choice represents

the core decision at the heart of many definitions of trust: People

must dec ide whether to open themselves to potential exploitation

by another person in order to produce a chance of personal ben-

efit (Rousseau et al. 1998).

The choices that participants make contradict a strict account

of neoclassical economics. Although participants on average think

there is only a 40% to 50% chance the stranger will hand money

back, clear majorities decide to trust that stranger (Fetchenhauer

& Dunning 2009). Pointedly, total strangers trust one another in

one-off anonymous exchanges even though many expect their

trust to be exploited and their welfare to suffer (see also Berg

et al. 1995). They gamble on the sociality of the stranger even

though they would rarely make the same bet if gambling instead

on a lottery wheel (Fetchenhauer & Dunning 2012). To an econ-

omist, the source of risk should not matter. However, to our par-

ticipants, it very much does.

Our research converges toward an explanation of this high rate

of trust that, if not the same as Tomasello’s, certainly rhymes with

it. Many indicators point to social obligation as the source of this

decision. Participants on average report that trusting a stranger is

more something they should do rather than something they want

to do (Dunning et al. 2014).

More important, the emotions that people attach to trust fol-

low the logic of social rules and obligations. The prospect of

breaking a social obligation produces high levels of anxiety and

guilt (Higgins 1987). In our games, those who feel more anxious,

guilty, and remorseful about distrusting the other person than

they do about risking their money are the ones who trust the

most – and these emotions predict trust beyond any economic

factor (Dunning et al. 2014; Schlösser et al. 2016).

Further work suggests the specific obligation that participants

feel they must honor, again one that is compatible with

Tomasello’s account. Participants trust because they feel they

must respect the character of the other person (see Dunning

et al. 2016). To distrust the other person would be to call that per-

son’s integrity into question. People express intense anxiety at the

prospect of doing so (Schlösser et al. 2015).

In addition, anecdotally, participants express that they choose

to trust not out of expectation but rather out of “hope” and “faith”

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(Dunning et al. 2012). When asked, our participants explain their

trustfulness by noting, “I just want to live in a world where people

trust each other.” Thus, they appear to take a “we” perspective, as

Tomasello would put it, even at zero acquaintance. And as “we >

me,” they feel obligated to trust even if from a “me” perspective

this might be irrational.

In retrospect, the adaptive value of this obligation to trust at

zero acquaintance is clear. First, it allows strangers, not only

those already in collaborative relationships, to benefit from the

behavior of others (Henrich et al. 2010). We hand over our credit

cards to complete strangers in restaurants. We purchase that trin-

ket on eBay and assume it will show up in the mail. We procure

our daily calories by going to stores run by people we never meet.

Perhaps another way to put it is that we are embedded in crucial

webs of implicit and fleeting collaborative relations with many of

the strangers we encounter every day.

In addition, obligations to trust and respect each other from

the start helps people to build the mutual goodwill needed for

more intense and complex relationships involving valuable shared

goals, joine d intentions, and smooth cooperation (Lawler 2001).

Yet, what is largely missing in Tomasello’s article is any refer-

ence to the delicate nature of a “we > me“ perspective. In our evo-

lutionary past, there have always been temptations to act selfishly.

It seems plausible that humans have developed all kinds of mon-

itoring systems to protect them from exploitation by other group

members (Cosmides et al. 2010). Thus, the observation that our

participants so cynically underestimate others’ trustworthiness

might be one such device to avoid being naïve and gullible.

Finally, being skeptical about others’ trustworthiness, but still

feeling an obligation to trust behaviorally, turns out to be a bene-

ficial strategy, at least in our laboratories. The strangers who

receive the $20 seem to respond to an obligation as well.

Although they are expected to return money only about half of

the time, they do so at a rate of roughly 80% (Fetchenhauer &

Dunning 2009). As such, trust at zero acquaintance may be

more an obligation than a preference, but it is one rewarded

handsomely.

The divided we and

multiple obligations

Bradley Franks and Andrew Stewart

Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, London School of

Economics and Political Science, London WC2A 2AE United Kingdom.

b.franks@lse.ac.uk http://www.lse.ac.uk/PBS/People/Professor-Bradley-Franks

a.stewart1@lse.ac.uk http://www.lse.ac.uk/PBS/People/Andy-Stewart

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002553, e70

Abstract

Tomasello’s account of the origins and nature of moral obliga-

tion rightly emphasises the key roles of social relations and a

cooperative sense of “we.” However, we suggest that it overlooks

the complexity of those social relations and the resulting preva-

lence of a divided “we” in moral social groups. We argue that the

social identity dynamics that arise can lead to competing obliga-

tions in a single group, and this has implications for the evolu-

tion of obligation.

We welcome Tomasello’s persuasive account of the evolutionary

and developmental origins of moral obligation as a “bipolar atti-

tude” towards moral decisions. Tomasello suggests that the bind-

ing quality of obligation generates a sense of a moral “we” as “a

kind of cooperative identity” (sect. 2.1.1, para. 1). We argue

that, while Tomasello’s account of the origins of obligation to cul-

tural group norms is correct in its outline, it overlooks signi ficant

aspects of the internal dynamics of how obligation and identity

functions in cultural groups. We argue that the “we” is frequently

divided so that the resulting moral obligations are multiple and

sometimes contradictory. As such, moral obligation appears less

bipolar and more multipolar, with its judgments looking less uni-

directional than Tomasello assumes.

This moral “we” is an important claim that links Tomasello’s

account with work on social identity and morality (e.g., Aquino &

Reed 2002). For us, Tomasello’s picture (and the work on social

identity of morality) offers only a partial account, since they over-

look the possibility of a divided “we.” Namely, if a cultural group

holds multiple moral values, those different values can drive dif-

ferent oblig ations for a single decision. For example, Kim and Jo

are both Christians. Sam, a fellow Christian in their community,

was caught stealing from both Kim and Jo. In response, Kim

advocates punishment, while Jo advocates forgiveness – both sup-

ported by community norms. Sam breaks the wider community’s

obligations for selfish reasons, but each of Kim’s and Jo’s

responses seems to the other to fail to meet significant obligations

within the Christian community’s norms. However, each is

emphasising different but equally important moral motivations.

This kind of phenomenon is echoed in moral ambivalence in

other religious, political, and ideological groups. It can be

explained straightforwardly by a social identity approach, in

which the content and context of specific identities affects indi-

viduals’ thoughts and actions. Research by Van Tongeren et al.

al. (2012; 2016) supports this notion as they have shown how reli-

gious individuals’ judgments can be shaped by differing virtues

valued within the same identity group. Our ongoi ng research

indicates that differing values within the same social identity

can lead to diverging and ostensibly contradictory moral decisions

(Stewart 2016; Stewart et al. forthcoming 2019). Using variations

on the trolley dilemma (Foot 1967; Thomson 1985), we show how

the content of a single identity can interact with different contexts

to lead to contrasting moral obligations and equally contrasting

moral decisions. This understanding adds nuances that are not

accounted for in Tomasello’s explanation of “excuses, justifica-

tions, or apologies,” since multiple obligations can create multiple

reasonable responses within a social group.

This quality is not rare in morality. The ability to support

apparent internal contradictions seems to be a cornerstone of suc-

cessful moral, religious, and ideological systems (i.e., ones that

have been transmitted across many generations of cumulative cul-

tural evolution, and are implicated in cultural group selection: e.g.,

Richerson et al. 2016 ). Curry et al. (2019) and others have dem-

onstrated differing values of morality across and within cultural

groups, which can lead to differing decisions over the same

issue (for similar cases, see Graham et al. 2013; Greene 2013;

Legare & Gelman 2008; Hall et al. 2019). Extending Tomasello’s

concept of the “special social structure” for bipolar obligations,

a complex moral system supports group cohesion. In complex cul-

tural systems, failing to meet one obligation in fact may be follow-

ing a competing obligation. Competing obligations may arise

from different values within the group’s moral system that

apply to the decision in question but which are equally or more

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justifiable in the context. As such, the concept of obligation, when

placed in concert with the social identity approach and its empha-

sis on context, offers a clearer understanding of how morality

functions within and between cultural groups.

Our approach also suggests that the evolutionary picture of the

origins of cultural-group obligation requires a role for a divided

“we” with its multiple obligations. Tomasello’s account does not

provide this: He offers a view of separate moral hunter-gatherer

tribes who do not interact to any significant degree, akin to tribes

in Greene’s Tragedy of Commonsense Morality (2013).

Distinctive moral systems bind together groups and generate

social selection pressures for good collaborators who can fulfil

obligations. The prevalent moral norms for each group are “uni-

valent” in directing behaviour in specific areas towards a single

moral judgment and behaviour. This description is a plausible

evolutionary starting point of cultural-group-based obligation.

However, other accounts of hunter- gatherer sociality suggest a

long evolutionary history of cross-tribe integration (e.g., Chapais

2008; 2011; Hill et al. 2011). In these accounts, groups combined

via pair bonding and mating, providing descendants with both the

genes of the integrated tribes as well as their cultural traditions.

This inter-tribe integration and interaction lays the foundations

for a divided “we” with multiple and possibly contradictory obli-

gations for members of the combined group. We do not claim

that such changes necessarily led to seamless and harmonious

integration of those different moral values. Rather, our suggestion

is that the recurrence of such situations helped create social selec-

tion pressures not only for good collaborators, but also for people

who are skilled navigators through complex morality and its

resulting multipolar obligations. In a world with a divided “we,”

these are the collaborators who could most skilfully cooperate

within a group holding divergent values from component tribes.

Moral systems are complex. Contradictory moral values are

held between and within groups, where they can prompt different

responses. The notion of obligation, when treated as monolithic,

underplays the complexity and context-dependence of such

responses. By treating obligation as a dynamic functi on, the vac-

illation between values provides a clearer understanding of how

morality and group identity are related both today and in our evo-

lutionary past.

Shared Intentionality, joint

commitment, and directed obligation

Margaret Gilbert

Department of Philosophy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-4555.

[email protected] http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=5365

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002619, e71

Abstract

Tomasello frequently refers to joint commitment, but does not

fully characterize it. In earlier publications, I have offered a

detailed account of joint commitment, tying it to a sense that

the parties form a “we,” and arguing that it grounds directed

obligations and rights. Here I outline my understanding of

joint commitment and its normative impact.

In discussing his important empirical findings, Tomasello often

invokes joint commitment, as when he says that “children at

around three years of age begin to appreciate the normative force

of joint commitments to collaborate” (sect. 2.1.2.1, para. 3). He

ties it to a sense that one is part of a “we” and associates it with

obligations to the other parties and with the parties’ protesting

actions contrary to the commitment. While linking it to the mak-

ing of agreements and the like, he does not offer an account of joint

commitment itself. I have developed a detailed account of joint

commitment through a long list of publications (e.g., Gilbert

1989; 1996; 2006; 2014), associating it with a sense that one is

part of a “we,” with obligations to the other parties, and with the

parties’ rebuking one another for contrary action and demanding

conformity. Of the theorists of shared intentionality to whom

Tomasello briefly alludes in his preliminary discussion, I stand

apart in having invoked joint commitment. Indeed, I see it as the

core of human sociality (Gilbert 2003). Given his citations of my

work in his earlier writings (e.g., Tomasello 2014a; 2016a), it is rea-

sonable to assume that Tomasello means to invoke joint commit-

ment in the sense in which I intended it. This commentary

summarizes my understanding of joint commitment and its rela-

tion to directed obligation.

The general noti on of commitment at issue is normative rather

than psychological. As I understand it, one is normatively com-

mitted to act in some way if one has reason to act in that way,

in the sense that should one abstain from so acting, then, all

else being equal, one has acted in error. This is not necessarily

a moral error. Rather, one has not done what one ought to do,

in a central sense of “ought” that does not imply a specifically

moral basis for doing the thing in question. One way of becoming

normatively committed is by making a personal decision.

From a normative point of view, a decision does more than

create the possibility of acting in error. It excludes a number of

potentially countervailing factors from consideration. Among

these are the personal inclinations, desires, and self-interest of

the person in question that opposes the action decided upon. In

short, it has exclusionary normative force.

Whereas, with a personal decision, the decision maker com-

mits himself (or herself), in the basic case of a joint commitment,

the two or more people in question commit all of them as one.

This commitment creates a possibility of error in action for

each of the parties and has similar exclusionary properties. It

also introduces important relations between the parties, to be dis-

cussed below. (For discussion of basic versus non-basic cases, see,

e.g., Gilbert 2006, pp. 140–41.) I focus on basic cases in what

follows.

What is required of each party to a joint commitment is that

each talk and act as would the representative of a single body

or person with a particular goal, belief, or other such psycholog-

ical attribute, depending on the case, aligning their respective

utterances and actions with those of the others as needed. This

behavior is required primarily in the context of interactions

among the parties themselves.

A joint commitment is formed once the following conditions

have been fulfilled: Each party has expressed to the other or others

his readiness for the joint commitment of them all in the way in

question, in conditions of common knowledge. That is, roughly, it

is out in the open with respect to the people in question that these

expressions have been made. At this point the joint commitment

has been established. (See Gilbert 2006 for some elaboration.)

Just as it takes two or more people to make a joint commit-

ment, it takes the same people to rescind it. Importantly, then,

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no one party has a unilateral power of rescission. The conditions

for rescinding a joint commitment parallel those for forming or

creating one: Each must express his readiness to accede to the ter-

mination of the commitment. For a relatively nuanced discussion

of how to be freed from a joint commitment, see Gilbert 2006,

pp. 141–44.

One reason to suppose that in a variety of circumstances,

including the context of acting together, people think that a

joint commitment has been made is the fact that they take them-

selves to have the standing to rebuke one another for acting in

particular ways and to demand that they not act in those ways,

where neither morality nor the self-interest of either party is

clearly at issue (Gilbert 1990). It can be argued that those who

are jointly committed have the standing to issue demands for con-

formity and rebukes for non-conformity to the commitment by

virtue of their co-imposition of the commitment on the parties.

Further, it is hard to explain the standing to issue demands and

rebukes in any other way. For an extended discussion of these

two points, see Gilbert (2018b).

I have tightly connected the standing to demand and rebuke to

directed obligation: For one person to be obligated to another to

perform a certain action is for the latter to have the standing

to demand that action of the former. I distinguish directed obliga-

tion from another kind of so-called obligation – moral requir ement

– and note that I can be obligated to you to perform an action that I

am morally required not to do, as when two people agree together

to perform a dastardly deed. See, for instance, Gilbert (2018b).

Tomasello raises the question of the relation of joint commit-

ment thinking to moral thought, and makes several points that

accord with my position. There can be joint commitments on a

large scale to uphold as a body a particular moral code. In that

case, the parties will have obligations to one another to act accord-

ing to that code. Again, situations of joint commitment are likely

to provoke a variety of moral concerns. See Gilbert (2018a,

pp. 761–64), for some discussion of the relation of joint commit-

ment to the moral concept of fairness.

Conflicting obligations in human

social life

Jacob B. Hirsh

, Garriy Shteynberg

and Michele J. Gelfand

Institute for Management & Innovation and Rotman School of Management,

University of Toronto, Toronto ON M5S3E6, Canada;

Department of

Psychology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville TN 37917; and

Department of

Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.

[email protected] http://www.jacobhirsh.com

[email protected] http://www.garriyshteynberg.com

[email protected] http://www.michelegelfand.com

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002425, e72

Abstract

Tomasello describes how the sense of moral obligation emerges

from a shared perspective with collaborative partners and

in-group members. Our commentary expands this framework

to accommodate multiple social identities, where the normative

standards associated with diverse group memberships can often

conflict with one another. Reconciling these conflicting obliga-

tions is argued to be a central part of human morality.

Tomasello’s target article describes how the sense of moral obliga-

tion emerges from a shared perspective with collaborative part-

ners and in-group members. Once adopted, this shared

perspective motivates compliance with the normative expectations

of one’s group, thereby facilitating social coordination and behav-

ioral regulation. Although we agree that adopting shared perspec-

tives with significant others plays a central role in human

motivation and cognition (Shteynberg 2015; 2018), there is a crit-

ical aspect of human morality that is not discussed in the target

article: the conflict of obligations. We argue that facing obliga-

tional conflicts is a key process by which humans become

moral agents, pursuing a moral code that transcends the demands

of any particular social role.

Tomasello’s article focuses on relatively simple situations in

which a single group perspective (or “we”) serves to regulate

one’s actions. In these contexts, there is a relatively straightfor-

ward motiv ation to comply with the normative expectations of

one’s group. Violating these norms can threaten one’s group

membership, while conforming to them helps to preserve rela-

tional ties (Cialdini & Goldstein 2004). As identification with

the group increases, so too is there a stronger motivational force

driving the desire for normative compliance (Terry et al. 1999).

In single-group contexts, human morality can thus be evaluated

with a single question: Is an individual conforming to or deviating

from the group norms?

Although social psychologists have traditionally studied identity

dynamics in the context of a single social group, there is a growing

recognition that each person can belong to many partially overlap-

ping groups at the same time (Bodenhausen 2010;Kang&

Bodenhausen 2015; Roccas & Brewer 2002). Critically, each one

of these group-bounded identities carries with it a unique set of

normative expectations for guiding behavior. While these norms

are occasionally in alignment with one another, they are also

prone to conflict. A lawyer may, for example, be expected to act

in a highly assertive and competitive manner at work based on

the norms of her office. When interacting with her family, however,

she may feel obliged to adopt a softer and more nurturing persona

in accordance with traditional gender norms. If these incompatible

normative standards become activated at the same time (e.g., at the

office holiday party), the result is an aversive state of behavioral

conflict and uncertainty (Hirsh & Kang 2016). In these cases, the

obligations that derive from one’s various group-based identities

cannot all be enacted at once, as satisfying a moral duty in one

domain can undermine it in another.

Recognizing the complexity of human identity and social life

thus provides an important extension of Tomasello’s framework

for the moral psychology of oblig ation. In particular, a given indi-

vidual will have not only one, but many distinct shared perspec-

tives that can be brought to bear on a given situation. The result is

a constant flux of felt obligations that wax and wane with the sali-

ence of one’s various group identi ties. In light of this normative

diversity, human morality goes beyond the simple question of

whether or not to compl y with the felt obligations of one’s

group, expanding to include the more complex question of

which obligations to prioritize in a given situation. Although

the easiest solution is often to ignore any moral obligations that

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are not directly relevant to the current social context (Lerner &

Tetlock 1999), we are nonetheless often forced to reconcile

incompatible social demands. Indeed, the moral uncertainty

that accompanies ethical dilemmas, wherein two or more ethical

norms are in apparent conflict, has been argued to play a key role

in the engagement of moral reasoning processes (Hirsh et al.

2018; Rest 1986). Navigating the tensions between diverse group

obligations is thus a central aspect of human social life and a

core component of moral agency and personal identity

(Shteynberg 2012).

Different social environments also vary substantially in the

extent to which a group’s n ormative expectations are clearly

defined and en forced (Gelfand et al. 2017). Cul tural contexts

that have been subject to a broader range of ecological and his-

torical threats tend to adopt stricter normative standards for

governing behavior, with stronger san ctions for those w ho devi-

ate from social expectati ons (Gel fan d et al. 2011). The result is a

“tight” culture, wherein individual freedom is sacrificed for the

sake of well-regul at ed grou p coordination. In con trast, cultural

contexts that have faced fewer threats tend to be more permissive

or “lo os e”, allowing a broader rang e of socially acceptable behav-

ioral opt ions at the exp ense of having less-predictable social

encounte rs. Given that tight cultures tend to be more socially

cohesive, people within them are likely to exp erienc e the feeli ng

of person al obligation to normative standards in a relatively

unambiguous manner, as described b y Tomasello. Cultural envi-

ronm ents with looser norms and more flexible ident ity struc-

tures, however, are more likely to afford conflicting

perspect ives and inconsistent normative standards. Moral

agency in such contexts is even more clearly rooted in an indi-

vidual’s attempts to harmonize competing expectations (e.g.,

through moral rea soning).

In summary, modern human life is far more complex than the

single-group contexts that defined our early human ancestors.

Advances in globalization, communication technology, and eco-

nomic development have all contributed to a social landscape

that features a diverse multiplicity of group-based perspectives

and normative expectations. In attempting to live up to one’s

duty, a central challenge faced by any moral agent is to reconcile

the conflicting obligations that derive from adopting multiple

roles and identities. Attempts to integrate these conflicting

demands are fundamental to the emergence of personal moral

agency, and hence should not be overlooked in any account of

human morality. Accordingly, a key frontier of future res earch

is to understand the strategies that individuals use to negotiate

these conflicting obligations; how the strategies vary across indi-

viduals, situations, and cultures; and the consequences they

have for social coordination across multiple actors. Situating

Tomasello’s framework within a broader social-ecological context

thus allows a more detailed description of moral obligation in

human life.

Personalizing the demands of reason

Charles Kalish

Society for Research in Child Development, Washington, DC 20006.

[email protected] http://corundum.education.wisc.edu

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002541, e73

Abstract

Children come to joint action with a generalized sense of “rea-

son,” which carries normative implications, before personalizing

reasons. A general sense of ought precedes specific notions of

individual perspective.

Tomasello’s target article addresses the developmental origins of

obligation in children’s participation in shared goals and joint

plans of action. However, shared intentionality and joint action

depend on the ability to construe behaviors as actions, as rational

and reasonable. Rationality is also at the heart of the origin story

of obligation. As noted in the target article, an obligated individ-

ual must be a rational agent with “the capacities to make and reg-

ulate oneself by normative judgments about what attitudes are

warranted” (Darwall 2013c, p.47). This idea of warranted attitudes

provides important conceptual resources for the construction of

obligation. Being warranted is already a kind of normative

relation.

From a very early age, infants make sense of behaviors using

something like a rational frame (Gergley & Csibra 2003).

Agents have reasons to do things. If the goal is to reach an object,

an agent has a reason to move toward that object. To do otherwise

is a mistake, a violation of some kind. By the time children can

talk, they justify and explain in terms of ration al action. Of course

the person seeking their dog will look where it is: it would be silly

to do otherwise (Bartsch & Wellman 1995). Indeed, children’s

appreciation of humor is a key marker of this perspective.

Nothing is funnier than to see an adult (intentionally) do some-

thing wrong. Talking into a shoe like it is a phone is nonsensical,

but only in relation to a rational, correct way to use a shoe.

Children’s early concept ions of rational action are more objec-

tive, depersonalized, non-representational than are adults’.

Reasons are not qualities of individuals as much as they are fea-

tures of situations. Perner and Roessler (2010) described this as

a “teleological” perspective (see also Gergley & Csibra 2003;

Kalish 2005 on “natural status”). The dog-seeker has a reason

to look under the bed, because that is where the dog is. A more

sophisticated conception of action personalizes reasons. Actors

have reasons “in their own lights,” as they represent the world

to be. The person who does not know the dog is under the bed

has no reason to look there. The philosophical literature distin-

guishes “justifying reasons” used to evaluate actions from “explan-

atory reasons” used to causally account for actions. Young

children seem prone to take justifying reasons as explanatory.

This is often characterized as a form of egocentrism. If an act

makes sense from the child’s point of view, it must make sense

for the actor as well.

At first blush, the hypothesis that children’s conception of

rational action moves from general (“ the reason”) to second-party

(“their reason”) seems exactly contrary to Tomasello’s account of

the dyadic then later generalization of obligation. However, the

kind of normative commitment involved in rational action is

not obligation. Indeed, it may be the personalization of reason

that establishes the dyadic context of obligation (and vice versa).

The big problem with children’s early egocentric construction of

rational action is conflict. Classically, the focus has been on conflict

between representation and reality (e.g., false belief). Conflict

between perspectives is equally challenging, although only certain

kinds of incompatibility actually conflict. People have different

goals, reasons to do different things. Even in a clear zero-sum

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situation – say, two people in a boat desiring different destinations

(Rakoczy et al. 2007) – there is no necessary incompatibility of per-

spective. One can think, “I have a reason to go to X, and you have a

reason to go to Y.” Only one goal will be satisfied, but that is com-

monplace: goals frequently go unfulfilled, plans are thwarted. That

you have a reason to go to Y is accidentally, empirically incompat-

ible with my reason to go to X. A deeper conceptual conflict arises

only after we have established a common goal, a joint intention. If

we have agreed, “We will go to X together” and you steer the boat

to Y, now there is a problem.

The problem of coordination underli es Tomasello’s account of

the origin of obligation. Obligation is a cognitive mechanism to

establish, maintain, and enforce shared goals and action plans.

In this role, obligation provides a kind of answer to the question

of “What went wrong?” when coordination breaks down.

Especially in efforts to restore coordination, obligation focuses

attention on the mental processes involved in an other’s behavior.

Recognizing that someone is doing something wrong or silly

entails understanding “warranted attitudes,” but does not neces-

sarily involve understanding what causes wrong or silly behavior.

This is just an evaluation. Obligation is part of a causal story. To

understand someone as obligated is to understand them as

responsive to reasons in a certain way. Reasons have to cause

(or at least motivate) their behavior. That is why citing the obli-

gation is an effective way of restoring coordination. I remind

you of the reason, and expect you to adjust your behavior in

light of it.

It may be in contexts of shared intentionality that children

start to think about the causal processes involved in acting on rea-

sons. When coordinating with another, a child needs to track and

repair specific individual attributions of goals, and reasons. It is

where the observation, “Sometimes people don’t do what they

should” turns to “Why don’t they?” Participating in joint action

requires concern with maintaining shared perspective. The deper-

sonalized teleological or justifying understanding of reasoned

action (people do what makes sense) becomes enriched with a

personal causal/explanatory understanding.

Tomasello’s target article has identified a critical nexus in

social cognitive development. The construction of a situational

and dyadic notion of obligation draws on an earlier general and

depersonalized notion of “acting for a reason.” In coming to

understand obligations, children are revising their understanding

of action and moving to a more fully representational theory of

mind. Understanding people as acting for reasons always involves

a tension between a general, justifying “what makes sense” form,

and an individual, explanatory “what they think” form. Obligation

in joint action turns out to be a critical meeting point of these two

forms both conceptually and developmentally.

Is that all there is? Or is chimpanzees

group hunt “fair” enough?

Angelica Kaufmann

Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Bar-Ilan University,

Ramat-Gan, 5290002 Israel.

[email protected] https://biu.academia.edu/AngelicaKaufmann

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002309, e74

Abstract

Tomasello claims that we lack convincing evidence that nonhu-

man animals manifest a sense of moral obligation (i.e., the con-

cept of fairness) in their group activities. The philosophical

analysis of distinctive evidence from ethology, namely group

hunting practices among chimpanzees, can help the author

appreciate the distinctive character of this behaviour as a display

of fairness put into practice.

Tomasello argues that “in some groups of chimpanzees,

individu als hunt monkeys together in grou ps. But they do

not call their partners out for poor performance, or apologize

or m ake excuses or feel guilt y for their own poor perfor-

mance, or feel obligated to share the spoils in a fair manner

among participants ” (sect.2.1,para.1).Accordingtothe

author, a chimpanzees group hunting does not amount to a

display of moral behaviour in the form of fairness. Other pri-

matologists have arg ued dif ferently (Brosnan & de Waal 2003;

de Waal 2006a; Høgh-Olesen 2009). Mo st notably, Boes ch

(2005 , p. 629) described the complexity of this practice:

“Like a team of soccer players, individuals react opportunisti-

cally to th e present situ ation while takin g into account the

shared goal of the team. Some players will rarely make a

goal, like defenders and goalies, but the success of the team

will critically depend upon their contribution. This is very

reminiscent to group hunting in chimpanzees where synchroni-

sation of different coordinated roles, role reversal, and perfor-

mance of less successful roles favour the realisation of the

joint goal.”

The philosophical analysis of group hunting practices can help

Tomasello appreciate the distinctive character of this behaviour,

and to reconsider the claim that we lack convincing evidence

that nonhuman animals manifest a sense of moral obligation,

like fairness, in their group activities.

We know that these group hunting strate gies require a coali-

tion of up to four individuals: the driver, who forces the target

prey (normally a red c olobus monkey) into a specific direction

into the tree canopy; the bloc ker, who makes sure that the target

prey does not de-route from the d irection imposed by the driver;

the chaser, who attempts to chase the target prey from above;

and the ambusher, w ho is positioned at the end of the induced

trajectory and is ready to trap the targ et p rey. Crucial to the su c-

cess of the hunt is that chimpanzees shall effectively coordinate a

single hunt as long as each of the participants to the hunt

remains loyal to his role. Sub sequently, the spoils are distributed

taking into account the role covered during the hunting. As a

result, individuals who worked harder and exposed t hemsel ves

to higher risks get more than the others when it comes time

to be rewarded.

As Boesch and Boesch-Achermann (2000) explained, the

hunting behaviour is a learning process that starts around 8–10

years of age and that takes about 20 years of practice in order

to be mastered. Different roles in the hunt require different levels

of expertise and can be performed by more or less experienced

individuals. This practice is very demanding because it requires

(1) the capacity to understand the behaviour of another species,

that is, the red colobus monkeys, and (2) the capacity to coordi-

nate actions among individuals towards a common goal across

time. Along with the authors we can establish that the mecha-

nisms in group hunting is kept stable by (a) a mechanism for

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individual recognition (that is, the mutual assignment of roles),

(b) temporary memory of actions in the recent past (that is, time-

delayed coordination of the actions), (c) attribution of value to

those actions (that is, acknowledgment of the roles), and (d) social

enforcement of those values (that is, fair distribution of the

spoils).

I shall explain the philosophical implications of the analysis of

this behaviour. Along with Tomasello, we can appeal to Bratman’s

planning theory (2014) to explain that what is crucial for a sense

of obligation psychologically is indeed the capacity for shared

agency which Bratman has outlined in a number of core qualities

required for complex multi-agent and time-delayed action coordi-

nation. Differently from Tomasello, I argue that these correspond

to the features that, according to Boesch and Boesch-Achermann

(2000), keep the chimpanzees’ hunting stable. Bratman argued

that the capacity for temporally extended intentional agency

depends on the ability to (b) retain memory of actions in the

recent past. This supports the capacity for self-governance that

depends on the ability to (c) attribute values to the actions in

which the agents are engaged. The latter triggers (d) mutual

responsiveness to those actions in virtue of the values that are

attributed to them. Then, this results in (a) a mechanism for

mutual recognition that enables shared intentional activity

(Kaufmann 2015; 2017).

I elaborate on this a nd explain that, in ad dition, the mecha-

nism of g roup hunting might b e unde rpinned by a relatively sta-

ble nor mative or, we can even s ay, proto-institutional

component that may be applied to explain how far fairness

can extend among chimpanzees. I shall call this phenomenon

action-free perd urance, and I will suggest how the display of f air-

ness among chimpanzees, and presumably among other animal

species, is made possible.

If we think about what distinguishes a hunting team from,

say, a f ootball team, arguably this is what we shall call “action-

free perdurance” (of a state of affairs). Social entities, such as

football teams, with an institutional component exist prior

and subsequently to the online co ordination of shared actions.

Their existence is independent of the actual or online perfor-

mance of a shared action. Instead, for group hunting, it

seems that the normative asp ect exists only in an online

mode – that is, during the actual performance of a shared

action. This is because the cognitive capacities that all ow

for conceptual thought and language may be requested for cre-

ating institutional reality, and for maintaining t he n ormative

power of institutions. Since language seems to facilitate the

establishment and the perdu rance of a state of affairs in the

absence of online coordination of shared ac tions, it follows

that creatures lacking conceptual capacities, presumably, lack

those for the creation of institutional facts as well.

Nevertheless, this different cognit ive equipment allows for

action-bound actsoffairnessasaconsequenceofhunting

practices.

Last, it is interesting to notice that, hunter-gatherer popula-

tions of humans in Paraguay and Venezuela carry on hunting

practices with analogous developmental paths to those of chim-

panzees, both in terms of the time necessary for learning and

of the age range during which individuals hunt more frequent ly

and more efficiently (Kaplan et al. 1985; Walker et al. 2002).

Further comparative analysis with chimpanzees group hunting

may even tell us about the continuity of shared agency in species

other than us.

The moral obligations of conflict

and resistance

Melanie Killen

and Audun Dahl

Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University

of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 and

Psychology Department, University

of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064.

[email protected] www.killenlab.umd.edu

[email protected] https://esil.ucsc.edu/people/audun-dahl/

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002401, e75

Abstract

Morality has two key features: (1) moral judgments are not solely

determined by what your group thinks, and (2) moral judgments

are often applied to members of other groups as well as your

own group. Cooperative motives do not explain how young chil-

dren reject unfairness, and assert moral obligations, both inside

and outside their groups. Resistance and experience with con-

flicts, alongside cooperation, is key to the emergence and devel-

opment of moral obligation.

How do humans acquire moral obligation, a unique

species-specific ability that enables individuals to live in large

groups peacefully, create rules of justice, fairness, and rights,

and protect the interests of the minority? Tomasello’s thought-

provoking answer, motivated by an evolutionary perspective,

starts with cooperation, through which identification with groups,

and the internalization of cultural norms, provides the basis for an

objective moral obligation. Tomasello proposes that individuals

live up to their moral obligations because they identify with

their social groups: “I am obliged to conform and identify with

those around me or else I really and truly, objectively, will cease

to be who I am in the group” (sect. 2.2.3, para. 3).

By rooting moral obligations in cooperation and group identi-

fication, however, Tomasello’s account invites two challenges: (1)

How to explain that individuals, including young children, sepa-

rate group norms from moral norms, often sparking conflicts; and

(2) How to explain that individuals, including young children,

extend moral norms to members of other groups? Answers to

these questions will explain how individuals seek to rectify failures

of moral obligation to others that permeate human existence.

Concerns with others’ welfare, rights, and justice often conflict

with group norms or authority commands. These conflicts give

rise to civil rights movements, corrections to gendered and racial

discrimination, and intrapersonal dilemmas about whether to

obey an authority (Killen & Smetana 2015; Turiel & Dahl 2019).

The abundance of such conflicts have led philosophers and devel-

opmental psychologists to separate moral concerns from norms

imposed by authorities and groups (Sen 2009;Turiel2002). This

contrast is evident, for instance, when authority commands conflict

with moral obligations to protect others: “a good soldier obeys

orders, but a good human being doesn’t massacre the innocent”

(Korsgaard 1996, p. 102; see Turiel & Dahl 2019).

On this view, morality has two key features: (1) moral judg-

ments are not solely determined by what your group thinks,

and (2) moral judgments are often applied to members of other

groups as well as your own group. Initially, some researchers

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proposed that young children confuse group norms and moral

concerns with rights, welfare, and justice (Kohlberg 1971; Piaget

1932). Over the past 40 years, however, researchers have shown

that children separate moral concerns with welfare, rights, and

justice from authority commands and group consensus by around

three years of age (Dahl & Killen 2018; Killen & Smetana 2015;

Turiel 2002). Based on this research, we contend that resistance

to and reflecting on social conflicts, alongside cooperation, is key

to the emergence and development of moral obligations.

Thus, while we grant that cooperation plays a fundamental role

in moral development, young children also disagree with parents,

peers, and siblings about which clothes they should wear, who

owns which toy, and whether it is okay to hit back (Dahl 2014;

Nucci & Weber 1995; Ross et al. 2014; Smetana et al. 2012;

Wainryb et al. 2005). The dynamics of young children’s resolu-

tions to peer conflict reveal that prosocial behaviors during con-

flict are related to peaceful post-conflict interactions, indicating

that cooperation often stems from interperson al conflict (Spivak

2016).

A further question that arises is how do children determine

which cultural norms are legitimate, and which norms perpetrate

negative social interactions with others? Cultures are notoriously

complex, emanating and disseminating messages that are contra-

dictory and inconsistent (Gelf and et al. 2016). Children evaluate

social norms, often rejecting normative expectations that could

harm others or deny deserved resources (Rizzo et al. 2018). In

fact, the existence of conflict between different types of obligation

demonstrates that moral norms are often distinct from group

norms (or there would be no conflict).

Tomasello proposes that children (and early humans) adhere

to an obligation to apply moral codes to the in-group prior to

the out-g roup, until at some point, when a “universalization”

based on the identification with all humans (not Martians)

takes place. In fact, young children endorse moral obligations

toward both in-group and out-group members. Conflicts with

in-group members reveal that interactions are not always cooper-

ative: Siblings have extensive conflicts over sharing toys and

refraining from the infliction of harm (Goulding & Friedman

2018), and same-gender peers have conflicts about whose turn

it is to play a game.

Conflict within the in-group may even appear prior to conflict

with the out-group, given the lack of exposure to other groups

early in development (exceptions include children from biracial

and bicultural families; see Gaither et al. 2014). Although some

moral transgressions toward in-group members are rated as

more serious, moral transgressions toward out-group members

are still judged as wrong (Rhodes & Chalik 2013; Mulvey

2016a). With age, children recognize that in-group preferences

are unfair (Rutland & Killen 2015).

No doubt, in-group preferences and outgroup distrust create

challenges for children (and adults) when considering inter-

individual treatment. Preference for the in-group occur s when

there is outgroup threat (Tajfel & Turner 1986). Without an obvi-

ous threat, though, children have a propensity to seek out other

children whether they are from the same group or a different

group (Nesdale 2004). Children from various racial and ethnic

backgrounds also reason that moral obligations apply to those

from different gender and ethnic groups (Killen 2007).

The developing ability to separate moral obligations from

group norms, and to apply moral obligations to both in- and out-

group members, provide the basis for addressing pressing societal

questions. From an early age, children recognize that non-

cooperative behavior is often necessary to achieve moral aims.

This leads them to rectify inequalities, resist unfair practices,

and challenge stereotypic expectations in situations involving

inter-individual treatment (Elenbaas 2019; Rizzo et al. 2018;

Rochat et al. 2014). Children understand the cost of resistance

to group norms, however, and are concerned about such conse-

quences as social exclusion (Mulvey 2016b; Rutland et al. 2015)

and ostracism (Song et al. 2015).

Balancing competing moral and group obligations begins at an

early age, sometimes collaborating and sometimes challenging

group norms. Yet these balancing acts continue to develop through

intra- and interpersonal as well as intra- and intergroup conflicts

across the lifespan, shaping the trajectory of human societies.

The sense of obligation in children’s

testimonial learning

Pearl Han Li , Annelise Pesch and Melissa A. Koenig

Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55436.

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

http://www.cehd.umn.edu/icd/people/faculty/cpsy/koenig.html

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002486, e76

Abstract

We extend Tomasello’s discussion of children’s developing sense

of obligation to testimonial learning. First, we review a battery of

behaviors in testimonial exchanges that parallel those described

by Tomasello. Second, we explore the variable ways in which

children hold others accountable, suggestive that children’s eval-

uations of moral and epistemic responsibilities in joint collabo-

rative activities are distinct.

Tomasello argues that children’s developing sense of obligation

towards collaborative partners and in-group members develops

within joint collaborative activities. Although we agree that the

human sense of obligation is evident in collaborative activities,

we believe that certain aspects of Tomasello’s discussion can be

extended to the case of testimonial learning. However, recent evi-

dence that children treat epistemic and moral responsibilities dis-

tinctly suggests that the behaviors children use to hold others

accountable may differ depending on the type of obligation or

commitment that has been broken.

In addition to Tomasello ’s argument that there is a sense of

obligation in moral cooperation, testimonial exchanges can also

allow speakers and listeners to make commitments to each

other, showcasing epistemic cooperation . In other words, learning

from testimony depends not only upon monitoring speakers for

signs of knowledge or competence (for a review, see Harris

et al. 2017), but also upon recognizing those with willingness to

cooperate and fulfill their commitments to tell the truth. In fact,

much philosophical research on the role of tru st in testimonial

learning has argued that when addressees believe what they are

told, take a speaker’s word for it and trust her for the truth

(Ross 1986), they recognize the speaker’s commitment to the

truth of what she says (Moran 2005), receive a unique kind of epi-

stemic warrant to rely on that speaker (Holton 1994) and can hold

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the speaker epistemically responsible as a result (McMyler 2011).

In other words, when addressees believe something based on a

speaker’s authority, their trust is grounded in a mutual regard

between the speaker and the addressee, which is similar to

Tomasello’s “second-personal responsibility” in joint collabora-

tion. Similar to Tomasello’s view that breaches of obligations

can result in reactive attitudes (e.g., blame, protests), contempo-

rary epistemologists also argue that listeners who accept a speak-

er’s claim acquire a suite of rights, including rights to hold

speakers accountable, rights of complaint, rights to demand an

apology, and rights to forgive (Gilbert 1992; Hinchman 2005;

McMyler 2011). Moreover, if addressees take someone “at her

word,” they are entitled to pass responsibility back to the speaker

when their belief is challenged, if they so choose (i.e., “pass the

epistemic buck,” Brandom 1994; Goldberg 2006).

Consistent with work in philosophy, a growing body of devel-

opmental research suggests that in testimonial exchanges that

involve forms of commitment, children engage in a battery of

behaviors that parallel those described by Tomasello in the

domain of action. Tomasello describes that the human sense of

obligation to collaborative partners manifest in (1) reactive atti-

tudes when the partner fails to play her role in a joint commit-

ment; (2) leave-taking behavior when breaking a commitment;

and (3) fairness and reciprocity among second-personal agents.

Similarly, when a speaker intentionally offers incorrect informa-

tion in direct testimonial exchanges, even infants detect, inter rupt,

and actively correct speakers who make mistakes either by mis-

naming common objects (Begus & Southgate 2012; Grassmann

& Tomasello 2010; Jaswal 2004; Koenig & Echols 2003;Pea

1982) or by presenting difficult or anomalous requests (e.g.,

“Can you bring me the refrigerator?”; Grosse et al. 2010; Shwe

& Markman 1997; Wellman et al. 2019). Not only can children

direct objections at deviant speakers, they also actively protest

against addressees who fail to fulfill the commands of a speaker

(Rakoczy & Tomasello 2009), demonstrating an early understand-

ing of the cooperative roles of both parties in testimonial

exchanges. As for the analogy of children’s “leave taking” behav-

ior, recent evidence reveals that children trust a speaker who

acknowledges her ignorance and a speaker who is accurate at sim -

ilar rates, but reject information from an inaccurate speaker who

acts as though listeners should believe her false claims (Kushnir &

Koenig 2017). It is possible that after hearing a speaker acknowl-

edge her ignorant state of mind, children credit the speaker for

clarifying her epistemic limits. Thus, compared to an inaccurate

agent who fails to do so, children are more likely to trust the pre-

viously ignorant speaker for new information. Further research

suggests that children’s reciprocity towards speakers is also similar

to that of cooperative activities. Indeed, young children prefer to

share more resources with accurate informants over inaccurate

ones (Ronfard et al. 2019), and choose to reciprocate with infor-

mative communicative partners over speakers that intentionally

withhold information (Dunfield et al. 2013). Together, these

lines of research suggest that children hold others not only mor-

ally responsible, but also epistemically responsible.

Tomasello argues that children display various behaviors

indicative of their understanding of obligation in joint intentional

collaboration. Do these behaviors differ depending on the type of

commitment that has been established? Recent work suggests that

children may evaluate moral and epistemic commitments differ-

ently. For example, an agent’s failure to uphold a spoken agree-

ment reduced children’s decisions to wait for future rewards

and their willingness to share with that agent, but did not affect

their willingness to learn new information from her (Pesch &

Koenig 2018

). Likewise, although an in-group member’s antiso-

cial behavior reduced children’s liking of and willingness to

share with her (which is consistent with Tomasello’s review of

children’s understanding of moral obligations within their

in-group), children’s decisions to seek new information from

(Hetherington et al. 2014) or imitate (Wilks et al. 2018) the

in-group member were not attenuated. Work like this suggests

that a breach in moral obligations may not affect children’s eval-

uations of whether the agent can fulfill their epistemic obligations

(and vice versa).

In conclusion, we think that various aspects of Tomasello’s

obligation account can be extended to the case of testimonial

learning, and that children likely treat testimonial transactions

as implicating distinctively interpersonal commitments and

responsibilities. Appreciating the shared nature of epistemic

responsibility between speakers and listeners opens new opportu-

nities for future empirical research to identify the various devices

used by speakers to commit themselves to the truth of what they

say, and the ways in which children detect epistemic commit-

ments and violations in their decisions to trust.

A lifelong preoccupation with the

sociality of moral obligation

Zoe Liberman

and John W. Du Bois

Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa

Barbara, CA 93106-3100 and

Department of Linguistics, University of California,

Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3100.

[email protected] labs.psych.ucsb.edu/liberman/zoe

[email protected] dubois.faculty.linguistics.ucsb.edu

doi:10.1017/S0140525X1900253X, e77

Abstract

Tomasello provides compelling evidence that children under-

stand that people are morally obligated toward members of

their social group. We call for expanding the scope of inquiry

to encompass the full developmental trajectory of humans’

understanding of the relation between moral obligation, social-

ity, and stancetaking in interaction. We suggest that humans dis-

play a lifelong preoccupation with the sociality of moral

obligation.

Tomasello provides a compelling account in the target article that

moral obligations play a foundational role in the evolution of

human ultra-sociality, unique among primates (Tomasello &

Vaish 2013; Tomasello 2014b). In particular, Tomasello acknowl-

edges the importance of “we-intentions” (Searle 1995b; 2010),

through which social actors performatively constitute human

institutions and the facts they make possible, such as promises,

debts, and other obligations. Tomasello clearly highlights the abil-

ity of children as young as three to engage in “we-intentions”, and

to think of themselves as members of sociocultural groups, with

important consequences for moral obligation. But by focusing

on young children, Tomasello offers little to clarify how the

capacity for attunement to shared intentionality might develop

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in its earliest stages, and how it might continue to play a pivotal

role in social interactions later in life. Older children, adolesce nts,

and adults continue to participate in dynamic exchanges of

stances (Du Bois 2007) that invoke, evoke, or simply presuppose

moral obligations. We believe that the sociality of moral obliga-

tion represents a lifelong preoccupation of humans. Its founda-

tions are evident early in infancy, and the dynamics of its

constitution and the scope of its effects become both more

nuanced and more comprehensive with development.

How early in development do humans see the world as struc-

tured by social groups, and see themselves as morally obligated to

follow their group’s norms? Tomasello argues that a shift happens

around 3 years of age. Specifically, he writes, “Ontogenetically, it

is only children after three years of age who identify with their

culture in this manner” (sect. 2.2, para. 1). But as Tomasello’s

own recent work shows, even toddlers (18-month-olds) protest

when people do not conform to a partner’s action, particularly

when the action is situated within a normative game (Schmidt

et al. 2019). That is, when toddlers see someone do a novel action,

they are more likely to protest a second person who performs a

different action, in cases in which the first person clearly marked

that the action corresponded to a norm (“How we do it”).

Although these actions are taking place within a partnership,

they seem to indicate a broader understanding of obligations

incurred via a group’s social norms.

In fact, a rapidly growing body of research suggests that the

origins of reasoning about people as members of social groups

is already in place in infancy, even before children would be

able to verbally protest (Liberman et al. 2017a). For example, in

addition to preferring to approach and learn from people from

their own group (e.g., Begus et al. 2016; Buttelmann et al. 2013;

Kinzler et al. 2007), infants in the first year of life expect people

from a group to act alike (Powell & Spelke 2013), to affiliate

(Liberman et al. 2017b), and to be similar to one another

(Liberman et al. 2016). Thus, even preverbal infants appear to

structure the social world into social groups, and to make infer-

ences about people’s likely traits and behaviors based on group

membership. Can these abilities be reconciled with an under-

standing of the “we-intentions” that would provide evidence of

cultural group membership? If so, are they indicative of

potential developmental precursors which can grow with the

experience of participating in the norms of a cultural group? If

not, is there any type of non-verbal evidence that could suggest

attention to “we-intentions” in infancy? In general, some

clarification is needed about where children’s clear understanding

of moral obligation to members of their own cultural group comes

from.

This points to further questions of mechanism for the learning

of we-intentions. Moral norms must be experienced, and learned,

through the scaffolding of interactional practices of stancetaking.

Moral evaluation is a stance act that is enacted by an individual,

but through social interaction it becomes contextualized as a we

act. According to the stance triangle model (Du Bois 2007), con-

versational partners calibrate the relationship between their

respective stances, undertaking a simultaneous commitment to

moral evaluation of an object; ethical positioning of themselves;

and affiliative alignment (convergent or divergent) with their

interlocutors (Du Bois 2007; 2014; Du Bois et al. 2014). When

a shared stance object commands our joint attention

(Tomasello 1988), it invites not only my expressed evaluation

but yours, plus a third aspect which may be explicit or implicit:

an assessment of the alignment between my stance and yours.

Children are attuned to stance alignment early, as suggested by

toddlers’ stances framed in dialogic resonance (Köymen &

Kyratzis 2014). Stance alignment continues to play a pivotal

role in the interactional construction of moral and social identity

through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood (de León 2019

;

Goodwin 2006; Stivers et al. 2011), in both typically developing

children and children with autism (Du Bois et al. 2014;

Sterponi 2004).

Although humans surely feel themselves subject to the com-

pelling force of moral obligations, they are also exquisitely attuned

to conflicting norms, which may compete for their allegiance

within and across groups. The possibility of negotiating which

obligation currently carries the greater moral imperative, given

the complexities and ambiguities of everyday social life, may

lead people to invoke, compare, reject, or adopt one moral prin-

ciple over another, ultimately resolving (or not) the vexed ques-

tion of what is the right thing to do. In the target article,

Tomasello provides striking evidence that moral obligations

emerge by early childhood and develop across the school years.

But we suggest it is important to consider a broader developmen-

tal time course and to come to terms with the cognitive and affec-

tive affordances, as well as interactional practices, that scaffold the

emergence of an increasingly nuanced attunement to moral obli-

gation within a social framing. Humans are an incredibly social

species: Our drive to cooperate and take stances that convey align-

ment with our own social group may be evidenced across the life-

span. Future research will benefit by bringing together converging

evidence from across the lifespan, drawing from naturally occur-

ring interactions and experiments, to clarify why, how, and with

what consequences humans manage the sociality of moral

obligation.

The sense of moral obligation

facilitates information agency

and culture

Heather M. Maranges

a,b

, Roy F. Baumeister

and Kathleen D. Vohs

Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306;

School of Psychology;

Concordia University, Montreal, QC H4B 1R6, Canada;

University of Queensland, St Lucia QLD 407, Australia; and

Carlson School of

Management, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455.

maranges@psy.fsu.edu www.heathermaranges.com

r.baumeister@psy.uq.edu.au http://www.roybaumeister.com

[email protected] https://carlsonschool.umn.edu/faculty/kathleen-vohs

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002334, e78

Abstract

Tomasello argues that humans’ sense of moral obligation

emerges early in development, relies on a shared “we,” and

serves as the foundation of cooperation. This perspective com-

plements our theoretical view of the human self as information

agent. The shared “we” promotes not only proximal cooperative

goals but also distal ones via the construction of shared under-

standing – it promotes culture.

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Tomasello provides an elegant account of humans’ unique sense

of moral obligation. He argues that this sense of moral obligation

begins early in human development, features a shared “we,” and

facilitates cooperation. He cite s work demonstrating that human

children, but not other apes, feel and act on a special sense of obli-

gation to their cooperative partners, in-group, and cultural group –

they share resources fairly and regulate their partners and them-

selves according to the implicit or explicit agreements of the

group. This analysis provides a potentially powerful explanation

to some vital phenomena about human selfhood and sociality.

This comment elaborates that connection.

Although the beginnings of culture may be found in several

dozen species (de Waal 2008), it is only among humankind that

culture is extensively developed so as to permeate almost every

aspect of life (Baumeister 2005). A major part of culture is shared

knowledge and understandings. Bourdieu (1977), a French sociol-

ogist, coined the term doxa to refer to “that which goes without

saying”–the shared assumptions that enable human beings,

even strangers, to interact cooperatively for mutual benefit. Two

people who share an extensive doxa can begin interacting effi-

ciently without having to explain everything from the ground

up. We have argued that theories of the human self need to

include a recognition that human selves are information agents,

or builders of the doxa (Baumeister et al. 2018).

The early-emerging sense of “we” and moral obligation are nec-

essary for information agency. Humans have special motivations

and abilities to build the doxa: They not only collect information

(as other curious animals do) but proactively share it with group

members, critique it, pass along information from others, empha-

size shared understanding even over possibly more accurate private

knowledge, and more. For example, people, but not other animals,

sacrifice valuable resources to share information that may be useful

to others (e.g., Feinberg et al. 2012;Tamir&Mitchell2012), add or

subtract details to gossip to emphasize what is of most importance

to the group (e.g., DiFonzo & Bordia 2007), and as individuals or

institutions, systematically pass on culturally relevant information

(i.e., they teach; Csibra & Gergely 2009).

Based on Tomasello’s analysis, we speculate that moral obliga-

tion was among the earliest sources of motivation to identify other

minds that might require the information one already has. In par-

ticular, obligation as collaborative self-regulation, whic h entails

group-mindedness and appreciation of social norms, encourages

people to share information broadly. Broadly shared knowledge

enables group members to access information that they may not

have personally gathered, to act on the same information and

beliefs, and, in turn, to cooperate more effectively. The extensive

benefits from ongoing cooperation would be a powerful selection

factor in favor of minds that could manage information agency.

Tomasello’s work showed that this obligation is sharply reduced

with out-group members and even with in-group members who

have not collaborated in the current project. The latter understand

why they are not invi ted to share even despite being part of the

in-group.

Crucial to our analysis is not only the complementary under-

standings that one person owes another a reciprocal favor, but

also the mutuality of that understanding. The sense of obligation

is thu s not just a first step toward improved cooperation on spe-

cific tasks. It helps lay a foundation for culture. As Tomasello says,

it is not just that one person feels an obligation and the other feels

a right: they both know and accept that the other has those feel-

ings. Indeed, this soon moves beyond dyadic interaction, so that

the doxa belongs to the group. In other words, not only does

the individual feel an obligation – the individual knows that

everyone in the group understands the obligation and will react

negatively if the individual refuses to honor it. Indeed, someone

who shirks such an obligation will be known in the group as self-

ish and uncooperative. This will be discussed first, as gossip

relates the nonreciprocation to the shared understanding of the

norm, and then the person’s selfishness will become part of the

doxa. Everyone would know the person is selfish and uncoopera-

tive. And this could prove fatal.

In many animals, first interactions with strangers are occasions

for distrust, hostility, and even aggression. Humans are different.

Studies with the trust game have shown that many people will

make cooperative overtures to strangers (although preferably

those from the same culture), even at risk to themselves. The rea-

son appears not to be a strong expectation that one’s trust will be

rewarded but rather a feeling that one is obligated to show respect

for the other’s integrity, even if one privately doubts it (Dunning

et al. 2014) or judges the stranger as having low self-control and

therefore poor moral character (Maranges & Ainsworth 2020). If

the other does not cooperate too, then the interaction can quickly

turn antagonistic; but starting off with a brief, tentative willing-

ness to make oneself vulnerable so as to offer a collaborative part-

nership is a huge step toward human culture. This step likely rests

on a deep sense of moral obligation to other group members.

Tomasello’s view helps explain the psychological foundation of

information agency – the shared “we” serves as a superordinate

schema that directs the self toward information beneficial to the

group and subsequent feelings of obligation beget motivation to

glean, edit, and share information with other group members.

Indeed, this builds on the analysis of the human self as an adap-

tation to enable the animal body to participate in a cultural group

(Baumeister et al. 2016). In other words, building and maintain-

ing the doxa is a basic purpose of the human self. It is itself a

cooperative enterprise. The collective understanding of the

moral psychology of obligation was probably a key step in this.

Obligations without cooperation

Julia Marshall

Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511.

[email protected] juliaannemarshall.com

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002565, e79

Abstract

Our sense of obligation is evident outside of joint collaborative

activities. Most notably, children and adults recognize that par-

ents are obligated to care for and love their children. This is pre-

sumably not because we think parents view their children as

worthy cooperative partners, but because special obligations

and duties are inherent in certain relational dynamics, namely

the parent-child relationship.

Tomasello contends that our sense of obligation is instantiated

through “agreement-like” social interactions. For example, if I

promise a co-worker that I will attend her birthday party, I com-

mit myself to do so; and I would need to apologize or justify

myself if I failed to attend the birthday festivities. Tomasello

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further argues that, from a developmental perspective, this under-

standing of obligation is first evident in children “inside, but not

outside, of collaborative activities structured by joint agency with

a partner.”

I agree that obligations are often established through mutual

cooperative agreements. But, I disagree that (1) obligations arise

exclusively out of such arrangements and that (2) children first

feel the demand of an obligation only in the context of activities

structured by joint agency. Instead, it seems that some obligations

are inherent in certain types of social relationships – namely, our

kinship relationships – and, importantly, that children recognize

this from a young age.

Consider a father with a sick baby girl. The way he feels toward

his daughter fits into Tomasello’s conception of obligation in

some ways but not in others. He likely feels a demanding and

coercive force to care for his sick daughter, and he would be

judged harshly if he decided to leave his daughter and go on a

vacation (Bloom 2011; 2013; Gopnik 2009). Importantly though,

a baby is not a cooperative partner with her father in any mean-

ingful sense; they are not attempting to accomplish a joint goal.

Instead, the parent is obligated to their child because the parent-

child relationship inherently requires care and love. And, this

holds true even when the baby grows up. Consider the case

where a child grows up severely brain damaged , which renders

them unable to presume the role of collaborative partner; a parent

is still obligated to care for their child. Furthermore, extreme cases

aside: Most parent-child relationships also purposefully lack a

joint collaborative element and are instead fundamentally

grounded in unconditional care and love (Clark & Mills 1993).

Social psychological and developmental research reveals that

children and adults understand that obligations exist not only

between collaborative partners but also between kin. For one, adults

evaluate unhelpful parents more harshly than unhelpful friends fol-

lowed by unhelpful strangers (Haidt & Baron 1996), as do older

children and adults (Marshall et al., in press). These effects emerge

presumably because parents are more obligated to their children

and are, in turn, evaluated more negatively for failing to help

them. In line with this interpretation, cross-cultural work reveals

that children at 7 years of age and older in both the United

States and India as well as adults in both countries consider parents

as obligated to their children (Miller et al. 1990) – parents have to

help their children even if they do not want to and even if no law

existed requiring parents to take care of their children.

I along with my collaborators investigated how children even

younger than 7 reason about parent-child obligations. In these

studies (Marshall et al., in preparation), we were interested in

whether younger children – like adults and older children – con-

sider parents to be obligated to their children. We tested children

not only in the United States but also in India, Germany, Japan,

and Uganda to assess whether children vary in their sense of obli-

gation across different cultures. We presented children as young as

5 and as old as 10 with scenarios wherein a child needs help, either

because they were very hungry and did not have food or because

they fell and hurt themselves at a park. Importantly, these scenarios

did not involve any joint collaboration or commitment; neither the

parent nor the child were working toward a shared goal and had

not agreed to work together to accomplish a collaborative aim.

Consequently, we asked participants to determine whether the

parent of the child in need has to help the needy child. We mea-

sured obligations in this way because researchers have established

that asking children about what people have to do captures child-

ren’s sense of deontological obligation as distinct from children’s

sense of what usually occurs (i.e., frequency) or of what people

want to occur (i.e., preference; Kalish & Lawson 2008). The results

of these studies rendered a clear pattern: Children and adults

alike, regardless of age and culture, recognize that parents are

obligated to their kin. That is, all participa nts indicated that a par-

ent has to help their child. These studies, to us, demonstrate that

children as young as 5 do not think obligations are restricted to

contexts involving joint collaboration, but rather that obligations

are present within the parent-child relationship even absent a

mutual goal.

Nonetheless, these studies only involved children as young as 5;

Tomasello notes that even toddlers – children around the age of

3 – recognize the normative force of joint commitments.

Whether children younger than 5 also recognize the normative

force of kinship relationships is unknown. We suspect that tod-

dlers would, but it remains an open question for future research.

Regardless, the research discussed here, to us, provides compelling

evidence that children at least around the early elementary school

years appreciate the demanding quality of certain types of relation-

ships. This is not because children consider parents and children

as cooperative partners but because obligations are instantiated

within certain relational dynamics.

The nature of obligation’s

special force

David Olbrich

Department of Philosophy, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT,

United Kingdom.

[email protected]

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002450, e80

Abstract

Tomasello’s characterization of obligation as demanding and

coercive is not an implication of the centrality of collaborative

commitment. Not only is this characterization contentious, it

appears to be falsified in some cases of personal conviction.

The theory would be strengthened if the nature of obligation’s

force and collaborative commitment were directly linked, possi-

bly through Tomasello’s notions of identity and identification.

It is a consensus among philosophers that moral obligation pos-

sesses some kind of special force in deliberation. Tomasello’s

interpretation of obligation ascribes three additional characteris-

tics: He suggests that it is peremptory, that it is demanding, and

that it is coercive or at least has a “kind of coercive quality” (target

article’s introduction, para. 1, item 1 [“Special Force”]). The idea

of peremptoriness is not mentioned again in this connection and

could have been explored further. But the rest of the interpreta-

tion will be contentious because there may be ways of apprehend-

ing obligation that do not represent it as demanding, peremptory

or coercive. The suggestion that the conjunction of these traits

forms a key explanandum within the theory of obligation will

therefore attract the objection that Tomasello’s theory of obliga-

tion is too restrictive, since it is designed to deliver the result

that obligation is always all three.

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Room for objection here is partly due to the possibility of alter-

native theories of obligation’s special force. That obligation is

always felt to be demanding or coercive is not a direct implication,

for instance, of either the following theories: that a) obligation

(perhaps in just one sense of “obligation”) is what one has deci-

sive moral reason to do (Parfit 2011 ), or that b) obligation is just

what one can be intelligibly blamed for violating or what one

might intelligibly feel guilt for violating (Adams 2002).

On the other hand, some cases of personal conviction provide

apparent counterexamples to the claim that felt obligation is

always demanding and quasi-coercive. Not everything that it

feels necessary to do for moral reasons is felt to be coerced or

demanded from one. Williams (1981; 1993) illustrated how the

performance of some obligations is felt to be expressive of

character-constituting dispositions, so that someone refusing to

betray their spouse may discover that they are literally unable to

betray them and that that is a fact about their character. The

fact that they would feel the obligation as a demanding one

were they to be reluctant to discharge it does not show that,

absent that reluctance, the obligation is felt to be demanding.

Similarly, Tomasello’s suggestion that a violation of obligation

would disrupt one’s identity focuses too much on the agent’s rela-

tions to violation rather than successful performance; identity has

affirmative aspects too, and it may be that the performance of

obligation is felt necessary because that is who the agent feels

they are. This is not an instance of feeling coerced.

There are two elements of Tomasello’s theory on which this issue

will genera te pressur e. The first is Tomasello’sidea,drawnfrom

Darwall (2006), that apprehension of obligation inv olv es the agent

in an aw ar eness of the demands placed on them by others who

hav e the authority to mak e those demands. If our obligations are

demanded of us, then the conclusion is inescapable that they will

be felt to be demanding; conversely , a more expansive conception

of how obligatio n may be felt will require an abandonment of the

insistence that obligations are authoritat iv e demands. Second, ther e

is the proposal tha t the coerciveness of obligation originates in the

existence of an implicit “threat – to my identity” (sect.3,para.6)

from the partners who may reject me, br eaking up the “we”

which is part of my identity, if I do not play my part in the collab-

orative commitment that defines us. But even if such a threat is ines-

capable and omnipresent , it does not follow tha t it should exhaus t

every aspect of the special force of obligation. A noncoer cive, non-

demanding special for ce will r equire an independent explana ti on.

Thus this issue regarding a slight expansion in one explanan-

dum touches on deep aspects of the theory. To the extent that

Tomasello’s theory is offered as a supplement to Darwall’s theory

of obligation’s demandingness, explaining what the authority to

make demands consists in, and how demands come to be seen

as legitimate, these problems will loom large since they require

a revision or extension of that very theory whic h is being supple-

mented. But the idea of the collaborative commitment that

Tomasello contributes might alternatively bear development out-

side that heavy theoretical machinery.

The prospects for such a development are promising. The exis-

tence of a collaborative commitment does not directly entail the

involvement of demands, directed by agents in that joint commit-

ment on other agents within it, that they carry out that commit-

ment. Rather, the issuing of demands, as it appears in the

experiments Tomasello cites, evidently serves a regulatory purpose:

agents who stray from what the collaborative commitment requires

of them are brought back to the required behaviour. Even if the

implicit issuing of demands is involved in all actual collaborative

commitment behaviour, the connection here is contingent and

not constitutive. The securing of compliance through the coercion

of an implied threat of deprivation of group membership, too, acts

as a second-order compliance mechanism. On some occasions

these mechanisms may be neutralized or weakened; although

such situations may disrupt the ability to ensure compliance with

the commitment, the inoperativ eness of the compliance mechanisms

would not r ender the shared commitment itself inert. When this

potential complexity in the relation between commitment, demand,

and thr eat is registere d, room is made for a more flexi ble treatment

of the various, possibly heterogenous, ways in which obligations may

figure within delibera tion and be felt emotionally.

The basic phenomenon, shared commitment, may make its own

contribution to the way in which the obligations of that commit-

ment are felt. Distinctive in Tomasello’s posited we > me motiva tion

is the notion of a commitment tha t agents themselv es identify with

insofar as they share in the collabora tive project that cons titutes the

relevant aspect of in-group membership. If an agent identifies with

this commitment deeply enough, they will ipso facto be motivated to

discharge it, but the fact that the commitment originated externally

will make a difference to the kind of force the obligation has for

them. That it is possible to develop the idea of commitment without

recourse to the notion of demand shows that Tomasello’stheoryis

not quite as close to Darwall’s theory as he thinks it is.

A hard choice for Tomasello

Philip Pettit

a,b

University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544

and

School of Philosophy, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200,

Australia.

[email protected] http://www.princeton.edu/∼ppettit

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002346, e81

Abstract

Michael Tomasello explains the human sense of obligation by

the role it plays in negotiating practices of acting jointly and

the commitments they underwrite. He draws in his work on

two models of joint action, one from Michael Bratman, the

other from Margaret Gilbert. But Bratman’s makes the explana-

tion too difficult to succeed, and Gilbert’s makes it too easy.

Michael Tomasello begins his engaging target article by marking

two features of the human sense of obligation. First, it has peremp-

tory force: “Unlike the most basic human motivations, which are

carrots, obligation is a stick” (Introduction, para. 1, item 1

[Special Forces]) And second, it is socially embedded: ‘Breaches of

obligations often prompt normative protest, from the offended

party, and apologies, excuses, and justifications, from the offender’

(Introduction, para. 1, item 2 [Special Social Structure]).

I agree that obligations, at least those we associate with moral-

ity, have these features. Together, they mean that when we face

a conflict between inclination and obligation, going with the

inclination – giving in to it – counts as a sort of failure, leading

to “a sense of guilt”; in particular, a failure for which others

will hold us responsible and which we will be expected to explain

away or apologize for.

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Tomasello postulates that selectional pressures have elicited a

capacity among humans to pursue goals jointly: a “ species-unique

… preference … for pursuing goals by collaborating with others”

(sect. 2.1.2.1, para. 1). And he thinks that this generates a feeling

among them “of obligation or responsibility to treat their partner

respectfully and fairly (sect. 2.1.3, para. 1). He documents this

idea in evolutionary and developmental terms, showing that

even toddlers feel “the normative force of joint commitments to

collaborate” (sect.2.1.2.1, para. 3).

The account sketched is not only evolutionary and develop-

mental, it is meant to operate at the level of both interpersonal

and society-wide morality. My remarks here bear most directly

on the evolutionary story at the interpersonal level. They rehearse

a difficulty I have elaborated elsewhere (Pettit 2018b), on the basis

of a distinct, language-dependent story about how morality could

have emerged among creatures like our forebears in Erewhon (an

anagram of “ nowhere”) (Pettit 2018a).

In expanding on the fact that we are a collaborative, interde-

pendent species, Tomasello draws on the literature of joint action,

in particular the work of Mich ael Bratman (2014) and Margaret

Gilbert (2014). But these philosophers have presented two very

different models of joint action, as indeed Tomasello (2016a)

has noted elsewhere, and I see a problem for his derivation of

the human sense of obligation, if he starts from either. Hence

my claim that he faces a hard choice.

Bratman offered a normatively austere account of how joint

action may materialize. According to him, all that may be needed,

roughly, is that it is a matter of common assumption among two

or more agents that they each desire a certain result – say, saving a

child in the water; that there is a certain plan whereby they achieve

that result together rather than on their own – this may involve

forming a chain into the water; and that if they play their part

in that plan, then others will play theirs.

Gilbert offered an alternative under which this is not sufficient,

and may not even be necessary. According to the alternative, what

is also needed, roughly, is that each at a cr ucial point recognizes

that there is a “joint commitment” among the parties to carry

out the plan, where this shows up in the fact that they will com-

plain to and about any defector.

Gilbert’s account is normatively richer than Bratman’s,

because it presupposes that the people involved in the joint action

have mastered a normative concept: that of a joint commitment.

This concept is normative insofar as it is already tied up with the

idea of obligation and responsibility; as she presents it, people can

understand what a joint commitment is only insofar as they have

an idea of what it is to hold someone responsible.

If Tomasello goes with Bratman’s model of joint action, then it

is not clear to me how he can get a sense of obligation out of it

(Pettit 2018b). He argues plausibly that the parties to joint activity,

even understood on this model, will each try to choose and control

partners so as to maximize the chance of success, recognizing the

traits that make a partner attractive; and that their reliance on joint

action will lead, across a variety of contexts, to a pattern of partner

assessment and selection, reform and rejection. But why should

this introduce a sense of obligation among participants?

As I view things, such joint activity might have evolved, at least

in a basic form, under familiar mechanisms of reciprocation illus-

trated by the tit-for-tat discipline (Axelrod 1984;Nowak2006).

Thus, I see no convincing reason why “early humans,” in

view of having developed “a unique form of partner control”

(Sect. 2.1.1, para. 2)– and even a unique sense of a joint “we”–

should have begun to hold one another responsible for failures,

protesting normatively “against non-cooperative behavior” and

giving “the non-cooperator a chance to mend her ways voluntarily

of her own accord

” (Sect. 2.1.1, para. 2).

Would Gilbert’s account serve Tomasello better? Yes, but with-

out offering an explanation of how early humans could have pro-

gressed from a stage where they lacked normative concepts, in

particular that of obligation, to one at which they developed

them. Her model puts the normative in place at the beginning

so that it leaves us unsurprised, but also unenlightened, by the

fact that it also appears at the end.

I am persuaded by Tomasello that we have inherited distinc-

tively collaborative dispositions from early humans, and that

even children articulate them normatively. But I think that the

dispositions might have operated in early humans without nor-

mative conceptualization and that something else is needed to

explain how we came to think in a normative fashion and to reg-

ulate our interactions normatively.

How is the moral stance related to

the intentional stance and group

thinking?

Hannes Rakoczy

Department of Developmental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, D- 37073

Göttingen, Germany.

hannes.rak[email protected]

https://www.psych.uni-goettingen.de/en/development?set_language=en

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002413, e82

Abstract

The natural history of our moral stance told here in this com-

mentary reveals the close nexus of morality and basic social-

cognitive capacities. Big mysteries about morality thus transform

into smaller and more manageable ones. Here, I raise questions

regarding the conceptual, ontogenetic, and evolutionary rela-

tions of the moral stance to the intentional and group stances

and to shared intentionality.

The target article tells a natural history of our moral stance. Although

philosophers have long been analyzing the conceptual peculiarities of

our specifically moral engagements with each other, our rea ctive atti-

tudes, second-person feelings, and the like, Tomasello’s project aims

at tra cin g their natur al foundations. Building on decades of research

in deve lopmental and compara ti v e psychology , Tomasell o closely ties

the phylogeny and ontogeny of the moral stance to more basic

social-cogniti v e capaciti es – in particul ar the inten tional stan ce,

shared intentionality, and group thinking. This project certainly pre-

sents massive progress in na turalizing morality.

Here, I simply ask how, exactly, the moral stance relates to the

intentional stance, to shared intentionality and to group thinking.

Clearly, the four stances (intentional stance, shared intentionality,

group stance, moral stance) are very closely related, and one of the

main merits of the target article is to highlight this very nexus. At

places, however, the target article reads as if the links were so close

that the stances almost coincide: “This creates the most basic […]

distinction [ …] between those of us who, by following and

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enforcing the practices and beliefs of our culture, are rational/

moral beings, and those from alien groups (barbarians) who are

not rational/moral beings at all” (sect. 2.2.1, para. 3). This passage

thus sounds like there may really be only one unitary distinction

in our social cognition: between rational agents (subject to the

intentional stance) with whom one can enter into shared inten-

tionality, that are members of one’s tribe (group stance) here

and subject to the moral stance; and the rest (“barbarians”)

there, who are neither rational nor members of one’s group, part-

ners for shared intentionality nor mo rally relevant agents.

But the real relations between the four stances are probably

much more complex: That some basic form of the intentional

stance and shared intentionality can come apart is exemplified

by the Machiavellian intelligence of nonhuman great apes (who,

according to Tomasello, understand each other as rational agents

in some basic sense without ever entering into shared intentional-

ity) and (perhaps) human psychopaths. The relation between

shared intentionality and the group stance is complicated by the

fact that there is no such thing as the one and only way to catego-

rize groups. Rather, social group concepts work in complex, criss-

crossing, and partly hierarchical ways. In a soccer game, for exam-

ple, “we” (the back four) play our part so that “we” (the 11 players

of our team) succeed against “them,” but a different “we” (the 22 of

us on the pitch) are playing this match according to conventional

rules that yet another “we” (the community of football players) fol-

low. Each of these hierarchically structured group categorizations

go along with some forms of shared intentionality, but arguably

very different ones ranging from very concrete and action-based

to abstract and far-reaching in temporal and spatial scope.

Tomasello’s bi-partition into dyadic and group-based shared inten-

tionality is an important step towards recognizing this plurality of

shared intentionalities, but it may not be fine-grained enough.

This becomes even clearer when considering the relations

between group thinking, shared intentionality, and the moral

stance, or normative stances more generally. Some normative

stances may be intimately linked, conceptually, ontogenetically

and evolutionarily, with more or less small-scale, tribe-like group

conceptions. This pertains, roughly speaking, to local, conventional

customs that solve coordination problems. Such customs are arbi-

trary: they are such and so (driving on the right; putting the knife

right of the plate), but could have been different (driving and kni-

ves left). Correspondingly, they are context-relative in a strong

sense: Since they derive their existence from the shared intentional

practices of the more or less small-scale group, they are valid only

in the context of the group’s activities; and if the group changes its

intentions, agreements, or decisions, the conventions change.

The moral stance as we know it, in contrast, seems not to be

contingent in the same ways on the concrete shared intentionality

of local, small-s cale group practices. If it depends on group cate-

gorizations and corresponding shared intentionality at all, these

are located at much higher levels of abstractions, pertaining to

the class of rational agents, potential interlocutors, or the like.

The moral stances derive their status from our sharin g a nature

of rational, sentient beings rather than from sharing an intention

to perform this or that concrete collective activity (Nagel 1970a).

Quite young children seem to be aware of this fundamental

difference between rational and moral versus conventional nor-

mative stances to some degree: They understand that moral

norms pertaining to human well-being and justice, for example,

lack the relativity to local, group-based customs and shared inten-

tionality typical of arbitrary conventions (Turiel 1983). And they

enforce norms of rationality and moral norms vis-à-vis other

agents irrespective of their group status, whereas they hold only

in-group members responsible with respect to conventional

norms (Schmidt et al. 201 2).

In general, group categorization and the corresponding forms

of shared intentionality range from the concrete, action-based,

transient, and very local matters of, say, a pair of dancers to the

maximally abstract category of rational sentient beings (which,

depending on technology and ideology may include [some] ani-

mals and robots besides humans). The normative stances related

to these different levels and layers of groups and shared intention-

alities differ in fundamental ways. It will be crucial for future

research to better understand how, exactly, group stances, the

intentional stance, shared intentionality and the moral stance,

relate to each other developmentally. This would be enlightening

theoretically, but may also be important politically: In light of

threats by new moral tribalisms around the globe, such a better

understanding may help to secure moral enlightenment and pro-

gress with its ever-widening scope. As Sellars emphasized long ago:

To think of a featherless biped as a person is to construe its behaviour in

terms of actual or potential membership in an embracing group each

member of which thinks of itself as a member of the group. Let us call

such a group a ‘community’. Once the primitive tribe, it is currently

(almost) the ‘brotherhood’ of man, and is potentially the ‘republic’ of

rational beings (cf. Kant’s ‘Kingdom of Ends’).” (Sellars 1962, p. 76f.)

Caregiving relationships as

evolutionary and developmental

bases of obligation

Rachna B. Reddy

and Henry M. Wellman

Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 and

Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.

ra[email protected] https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/rachnareddy/

[email protected]

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002504, e83

Abstract

Obligation as defined by Tomasello requires mutually capable

parties, but one-sided caregiver relationships reveal its develop-

mental and evolutionary precursors. Specifically, “coercive”

emotions may prompt protective action by caregivers toward

infant primates, and infants show distress toward caregivers

when they appear to violate expectations in their relationships.

We argue that these early social-relational expectations and

emotions may form the base of obligation.

In this target article, Tomasello tackles the internalized motiva-

tions that he believes drive the morality of a collective “we” that

is foundational to our distinctly cooperative and moral species.

He argues for a human-specialized feeling and cognitive under-

standing of obligation that is “coercive.” It drives us like a

“stick” rather than a “carrot.” The emotions that surround it,

such as guilt and shame, are reflective ones.

We agree that obligations and the emotions surrounding them

are (1) understudied yet importantly linked to the prosocial,

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group-serving proclivities of our species, (2) early developing in

children, and (3) from current evidence seemingly absent in our

closest primate relatives. We also agree that child developmental

and primate-comparative findings can be used to support evolu-

tionary hypotheses. But we think Tomasello has overlooked a cru-

cial place to examine evidence for the evolution and development

of obligation. Specifically, he writes that obligative forces arise

only between individuals who can hold one another mutually

accountable: thus, human infants are excluded from obligatory

“contracts.” No doubt mutual accountability is foundational to

obligatory understandings. But, one-sided caregiver relationships

may be precisely where the emotional and cognitive precursors

to obligation have their evolutionary and ontogenetic starts.

In species that care for their young, there are few forces more

emotionally “coercive” than an infant in danger. Even non-

parents may see to their needs. For example, female ring-tailed

lemurs permit infants who are not theirs to leap onto their

backs when a raptor flies overhead (Gould 1992), colobus monkey

males clutch infants to their chests for safety when chimpanzees

hunt them (Reddy, personal observations, 2019), and teenaged

chimpanzees may whimper and search for their orphaned youn-

ger siblings if they fall behind the group, risking becoming lost

themselves (Reddy & Mitani 2019).

The preceding behaviors do not necessarily reveal the sort of

action and feelings that Tomasello emphasizes as “mature” signs

of obligation. No current evidence exists, for example, that non-

human primates of any age ruminate upon their guilt if their vul-

nerable charges (or their “mutually accountable” friends) are

killed when they could have acted (despite exhibiting grief-like

symptoms upon the deaths of close companions, e.g., Engh

et al. 2006). Yet, the swiftness with which they act protectively,

and the visible distress they show when others are in danger indi-

cate the probability of coercive emotions that prompt these

actions – emotions that could provide evolutionary and develop-

mental foundations to a more reflective emotion like guilt and the

actions it prompts (e.g., apology).

Moreover, although young human infants (and nonhuman

primates) may not understand “terms” of obligation in full

force, they do appear to have expectations about their social rela-

tionships and show distinct responses in situations when those

expectations are violated. For example, when adults do not

smile at them in the classic “still face” paradigm, human infants

cry. From 8–10 months of age they also show distress and act pro-

actively if they witness moral violations or unfairness or experi-

ence it themselves (Hamlin 2013).

When their mothers attempt to wean them, young chimpan-

zees throw “tantrums,” screaming, wailing, and occasionally hit-

ting and biting their mothers. When young humans don’t get

their way, they throw tantrums too, as characteristic of the “terrible

twos.” The distress shown by infants of both species toward their

caregivers may reflect their displeasure at the experience alone

(e.g., hunger) and their knowledge that their caregiver will tolerate

such an outburst. However, tantrums may also reflect a proto-form

of emotional “outrage” that infants have when their caregivers

behave differently from “usual” within their relationship. How

caregivers respond in these situations is further interesting.

Chimpanzee mothers attempt to ignore their infants’ tantrums,

but occasionally appear to become distressed and frustrated them-

selves: when their infants hit them repeatedly on the back, for

example, mothers may turn around, grab infants by the arms

and shake them. Critically, however, mothers often then swiftly

pull infants into tight embraces (Van Lawick-Goodall 1968;

Reddy, unpublished data, 2019). The human parallels are obvious:

parents often report guilt about how angry they become in the face

of child tantrums. We do not suggest that anything like “guilt” and

“apology” motivate these “reconciliatory

” actions in chimpanzees

(cf. de Waal & van Roosmalen 1979), but chimpanzee mothers

do follow their aggressive actions with a comforting one that ame-

liorates their infants’ distress.

Furthermore, the emotions and expectations human infants

and non-human primates have about their own caregiving rela-

tionships suggest that it is some quality of social bonds

themselves, not collaborative capability or willingness of the indi-

viduals alone, that provide the basis for proto-obligatory “terms.”

Consider one of Tomasello’s own examples: Chimpanzees do not

share meat with all others who attempted to hunt, but they do

share with and beg from friends who are their allies over others

(Mitani et al. 2000). They continue to share meat when one of

the friends has grown old and weak and is no longer a competent

collaborative partner. Furthermore, at older ages (at least) both

nonhuman primates and human children show emotion and

form social expectations not only about their own relationships,

but also about the relationships of third parties (e.g., Cheney &

Seyfarth 1980; Rhodes & Wellman 2017).

Essentially, we propose that proto-obligatory motivations and

expectations may begin with, “X helps me because X is my

mother/I must help X because X is my offspring.” As individuals

in group-living species grow up, this understanding may develop

into “because X is my friend” and “because X is Y’s daughter.” In

our species, children (from at least age 3 onward) may develop

obligatory feelings and understanding as Tomasello describes of

a more self-reflective nature: “I must help X.” It is nearly impos-

sible to disentangle the preceding motivations in natural contexts,

suggesting the need for work that will integrate “natural” observa-

tions of relationships with experimental studies. For children, how

and when do actions and feelings of obligation arise when the

other person is a caregiver (e.g., mother)? For chimp anzees and

children, students of Tomasello have already begun related

work, finding that friendships influence helping propensities in

both chimpanzees and human children (Engelmann et al. 2019).

Does the concept of obligation

develop from the inside-out or

outside-in?

Marjorie Rhodes

Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003.

[email protected] http://kidconcepts.org.

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002590, e84

Abstract

Tomasello proposes that the concept of obligation develops

“from the inside-out”: emerging first in experiences of shared

agency and generalizing outward to shape children’s broader

understanding. Here I consider that obligation may also develop

“from the outside-in, ” emerging as a domain-specific instantia-

tion of a more general conceptual bias to expect categories to

prescribe how their members are supposed to behave.

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Tomasello proposes that the concept of obligation emerges in a

manner that I will call, “from the inside-out.” A sense of obliga-

tion emerges first in children’s experiences of shared agency –

where they feel a sense of obligation to their collaborative partners –

and is then generalized outward to develop a more abstract sense of

obligation among group members. On this account, children begin

to feel obligated to their group members and to see their group mem-

bers as obligated to them – simplybecausetheyareinthesamepack–

by around their third birthday.

Here I consider that the concept of obligation might also (or

alternately) develop “ from the outside-in.” That is, that children

have abstract intuitions about social structure that develop sepa-

rately from their own interpersonal interactions.

Already by age 3, and perhaps earlier in infancy (Ting et al.

2019), children have an abstract understanding that social groups

specify who is obligated to one another and who is not (Chalik &

Rhodes, forthcoming). We know that this understanding is

already abstract – not tied to children’s own perspective – because

children rely on it to guide their social understanding even when

they are not members of the relevant groups.

To illustrate, in Rhodes (2012; also described in the target arti-

cle, sect. 2.2.2.3, para. 2) children were introduced to two

made-up social groups (called “flurps” and “zazes”); children

had never heard of these groups before and were not assigned

to be members of either group. In these studies, by age 3, children

predicted that a flurp, for example, would harm a zaz, rather than

another flurp. In Rhodes (2012), I speculated that these findings

had to do with a sense of obligation – that children expected

the flurp to avoid harming another flurp because, as group mem-

bers, they were obligated to protect one another. Indeed, in

Rhodes and Chalik (2013), children judged flurps to hold intrinsic

obligations to one another but not to zazes.

If the concept of obligation that drove children’s responses in

these studies developed from the inside-out, then we might expect

children to solve these problems by placing themselves in the shoes

of a flurp. That is, they might identify with the agent, and think of

the other flurps as their in-group members. We might expect this

to be particularly so around age 3, when children are just beginning

to generalize from their own experiences outward. But this is not

how children thought about these problems. When children are

themselves put into made-up groups during experiments (e.g.,

Dunham et al. 2011), the first (and sometimes only) thing that hap-

pens is that they feel and respond more positively toward members

of their own group (for review, see Dunham 2018). But children did

not show any evidence of in-gr oup positivity in these studies – when

asked who a flurp would do something nice for, they responded at

chance. Children’s responses in these third party scenarios – where

they reliably expected flurps to harm zazes but to be equally nice to

everyone (Chalik & Rhodes 2018;Rhodes2012) – is exactly opposite

to how children respond when they themselves are placed in

made-up groups (where they are nicer to in-group members but

not particularly mean to out-group members (Buttelmann &

Boehm 2014;Dunhametal.2011). Thus, when children predicted

that flurps would harm zazes, they relied on abstract intuitions

about how group memberships specify social obligations, rather

than their own first-person perspectiv e.

From where would children get such an early developing

abstract understanding of obligation if not by generalizing their

own social experiences

? One possibility is that children’s concept

of obligation develops as a specific instantiation of a more general

conceptual bias to treat categories as constraining what their

members are supposed to do. This is a domain-general feature

of early concepts. For instance, children do not just think that

cheetahs usually do run fast, they think they are supposed to

(Haward et al. 2018; Foster-Hanson & Rhodes 2019). Children

think there is something wrong with a category member who

does not follow the norms of their group (Roberts et al. 2017) –

and they hold this intuition just as strongly for categories of ani-

mals as for categories of people (Foster-Hanson et al. 2018).

Children also think that the clearest and most informative exam-

ple of an animal category is the one that best illustrates these pre-

scribed properties, even if such an instance is rare (e.g., the very

fastest cheetah in the world; Foster-Hanson & Rhodes 2019;

Foster-Hanson et al 2019). As another example, children also

think that artifacts are supposed to fulfill their intended functions,

and again, that there is something defective with one that does not

(Diesendruck et al. 2003).

Thus, by early childhood, children have abstract, domain-

general intuitions that categories prescribe how their members

are supposed to be. In the social domain, this is instantiated as

an expectation that categories constrain how people are supposed

to treat one another, whereas in other domains it is instantiated in

other ways (e.g., regarding how animals are supposed to get food,

avoid predators, and so on). From this perspective, the general

processes that drive concept ual development – in which children

actively build hierarchical representations to make sense of vari-

ous domains of experience (Gopnik & Wellman 2012) – can

lead children to develop an abstract understanding that members

of a group hold special obligations to one another, separately from

their own experiences with shared or collective agency.

Of course, both types of developmental pro cesses could simulta-

neously be at play – children could both develop a sense of their own

obliga tion s via their experienc es with shared agency and begin to

generalize them out, while at the same time, the mechanisms that

underlie conceptual development lead them to construct an abstra ct

understanding of the normativ e implications of group membership.

A full developmental theory of how this critical concept arises would

needtoexaminealloftheseprocessesandhowtheymightrelateto

one another across early childhood development.

Feelings of obligation are valuations

of signaling-mediated social payoffs

Amanda Rotella

, Adam Maxwell Sparks

and Pat Barclay

Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, N1G 2W1,

Canada and

Department of Anthropology and Center for Behavior, Evolution

and Culture, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1553.

[email protected] http://amandarotella.ca/research/

[email protected] http://adammaxwellsparks.com/

barclayp@uoguelph.ca http://www.patbarclay.com/

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002322, e85

Abstract

We extend Tomasello’s framework by addressing the functional

challenge of obligation. If the long-run social consequences of a

decision are sufficiently costly, obligation motivates the actor to

forgo potential immediate benefits in favor of long-term social

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interests. Thus, obligation psychology balances the downstream

socially-mediated payoffs from a decision. This perspective can

predict when and why obligation will be experienced.

Tomasello advances a novel framework regarding the phylogeny

and development of obligation, describing obligation as a coercive

motivation. However, he did not explicitly define this motivation.

To extend Tomasello’s argument, we advance the following defi-

nition of obligation: An obligation is a motivational sentiment in

response to social expectations (e.g., requirements, commitments,

taboos, rules) and potential social costs (e.g., loss of relationships,

reputational consequences) which serves to motivate an individual

to perform an action in a particular manner or to a level beyond

what would maximize one’s inclusive fitness if there were no social

costs for acting otherwise.

This definition adds to Tomasello’s characterization of obliga-

tion by specifying that (1) there is a baseline willingness to per-

form said actions – for example, the material outcome is useful

to me or to those I value based on kinship or interdependence

or stake (see Aktipis et al. 2018, Balliet et al. 2017); (2) social obli-

gations can make one willing to perform these actions differently or

to a higher level than one might otherwise “want” (e.g., allocating

resources differently than the level predicted from kinship, indepen-

dence, and stak e); (3) these obligations derive from per ceiv ed recip-

rocal or reputational consequences of (not) doing so (i.e., future

costs and benefits); and (4) that the str ategy of this system is at

the functional level, and need not be consciously accessible.

For oblig ation to be adaptive, the mechanism must resolve a

fitness problem. Here, it accounts for negative social conse-

quences for not performing an expected action, or not performing

it in the expected way. Performing an obligated action sends

information – a positive social signal to an individual or group,

whereas failing to perform the action sends the opposite signals

(e.g., that one (de)values the relationship or membership, that

one is (un)likely to default on existing relationships, or that one

is (un)trustworthy). Given that reputation-based signals inform

social decisions of others, such as partner choice, approach, and

avoidance (Barclay 201 3; 2016; Barclay & Willer 2007; Sylwester

& Roberts 2010; 2013; Wu et al. 2016), (in)action could result

in broad social consequences with long-term costs, such that

someone (not) performing an action may be chosen less often

as a social partner and receive less help from others. Consistent

with this interpretation, multiple lines of evidence suggest that

people calibrate their behaviors according to the perceived repu-

tational costs and benefits of their actions (Barclay 2013; 2016;

Barclay & Willer 2007; Feinberg et al. 2014; Rotella et al., in prep-

aration; Wu et al. 2016). Notably, when one fails to compl ete the

expected action, they may experience social emotions (e.g., guilt,

shame) to motivate them to repair the relationship or diminish

the reputational costs (Ketelaar & Au 2003; Schniter et al. 2012;

Sznycer et al. 2016; 2018). This characterization of obligation pos-

its that the intensity of the perceived obligation will correspond to

the perceived social consequences from failing to meet the expec-

tations of others.

We can formalize this at the functional level. There are multi-

ple pathways to fitness outcomes (reviewed by Barclay & Van

Vugt 2015), so there are multiple proximate motivation systems

that cause our willingness to help. For example, one can have a

kin-based interest and a reciprocal exchange interest in the

same partner (e.g., “I love you brother, but this is a huge favor –

you’d better repay it”). Thus, one’s total fitness interest and corre-

sponding proximate willingness to help (h) is some cumulative

function of fitness consequences derived based on kinship (k),

interdependence/stake (i), demands from reciprocal partners (d),

signaling value (s), and payoffs from various other social expecta-

tions (e), such that h = k + i + d + s + e. These various social out-

comes (d, s, e) constitute one’s obligation (o). If these

motivations are additive, then one’s obligation o = d + s + e. To

generalize this to non-additive functions, one’s willingness to

help is some function (f) of these factors, such that h = f(k,i,d,s,

e). As such, one’s obligation is the component of one

’s willingness

which goes beyond the level directly predicted by kinship and

interdependence/stake alone – that is, o = f(k,i,d,s,e) – f(k,i). This

model is consistent with the idea that as social demands are

greater, stronger feelings of obligation will be experienced.

Further, obligation will be perceived as a motivating force in situ-

ations where there is a conflict of interest, resulting in a proximate

ambivalence when you “have to do” X but “want” to do Y.

Although joint intentionality often precedes obligation, our

theorizing suggests that joint intentionality is not required to

experience obligation; the feeling of obligation arises anytime

that failure to complete the obligated action would result in neg-

ative social consequences. For example, dieting or raising pets and

houseplants do not require joint intentionality. However, once

these commitments are public knowledge ( joint knowledge or

expectations), one may feel obligated to persist because desisting

would convey negative information about oneself.

In summary, we posit that obligation will be experienced when

(1) there are learned social expectations (towards an individual or

group) that, if failed, can result in far-reaching social conse-

quences by impacting one’s reputation; (2) these expectations

implicitly or explicitly motivate people to act in a different man-

ner or to a different degree than they would otherwise act; and (3)

the function of moral obligation is to forgo short-term benefits

likely to be associated with long-term social consequences. In

the absence of reputational concerns (real or perceived), it is

unlikely that feelings of obligation will be elicited. Our theorizing

is consistent with the characteristics of obligation described by

Tomasello, such that obligation is a special motivational force

with a coercive quality which has a special social structure in

human society, given the complexity of human social interactions.

Thus, we extend his model by emphasizing the role of social

repercussions – especially via signaling – in driving the experience

of obligation, and that obligation is particularly salient when there

is a conflict between one’s immediate inclusive fitness interests

and the potential downstream social consequences of deviating

from others’ expectations.

Who are “we”? Dealing with

conflicting moral obligations

Alex Shaw

and Shoham Choshen-Hillel

Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637 and

Hebrew University of Jerusalem, School of Business Administration and the

Center for the Study of Rationality, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 9190501.

[email protected] https://www.dibslab.uchicago.edu/

[email protected] https://shohamchoshen.wixsite.com/psych

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002577, e86

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Abstract

Satisfying one’s obligations is an important part of being human.

However, people’s obligations can often prescribe contradictory

behaviors. Moral obligations conflict (loyalty vs. fairness), and so

do obligations to different groups (country vs. family when one

is called to war). We propose that a broader framework is needed

to account for how people balance different social and moral

obligations.

So many vows. They make you swear and swear. Defend the King, obey the

King, obey your father, protect the innocent, defend the weak. But what if

your father despises the King? What if the King massacres the innocent? It’s

too much. No matter what you do, you’re forsaking one vow or another.

– Jamie Lannister, Game of Thrones.(Benioff&Weiss2012).

Tomasello provides a detailed account suggesting that the sense of

obligation is a central human motivation. According to this

account, the sense of obligation arises out of the need to cooperate

in order to survive and thrive in the socia l world. We agree that

obligations are indeed an important part of being human.

However, we highlight the notion that mutualistic cooperation

is just one of many potential triggers of social obligations – people

have obligations to myriad individuals, groups, and moral princi-

ples even in situations where they do not directly or profitably

cooperate with those individuals. A key question left unanswered

by Tomasello’s account, we argue, is how people navigate such

obligations when they conflict.

Our social world often confronts us with obligations that con-

tradict one another. One prominent case is allegiances to different

groups. Tomasello theorizes that obligation is based on a “we”

experience with one’s group. However, most indivi duals form

“we” relationships with several different groups and subgroups:

people are parents, siblin gs, friends, bosses, subordinates, citizens,

and members of the human race (Turner et al. 1987). The obliga-

tions to all these groups often clash. For example, a man called to

war may be torn between his duty to serve his country, and his

direct responsibility for taking care of his family. People further

feel a sense of obligation to their moral principles that can also

conflict. People believe that it is important to avoid harm, but

also that it is important to prevent others from dying – but

what should one do when harming someone can lead to saving

more lives (Greene 2008)? Be a loyal friend, and also treat every-

one equally and fairly – but what if helping your friends means

showing favoritism (Shaw et al., in press; Waytz et al. 2013)? Be

honest, and be kind – but what do you do when a friend who

just got a terrible haircut asks: “Does my hair look good?”

(Levine & Schweitzer 2014 ). Research on adults suggests that peo-

ple are able to balance these competing obligations in complex

ways.

There is now a growing body of research demonstrating that

such conflicts of obligations emerge early on in human develop-

ment. This research suggests that the ability to resolve these con-

flicts may be an im portant part of children’s early normative

understanding. By the age of 6, children feel tensions between rec-

iprocity and fairness; feeling conflicts about whether they should

like someone who gave them more than others or someone who

was fair and gave everyone the same (Shaw et al. 2012). Relatedly,

children understand both the obligation of efficiency (i.e., maxi-

mizing social welfare), and the obligation to be fair and maintain

equity, and attempt to strike a balance between them

(Choshen-Hillel et al., in press). Children are also able to navigate

multiple concerns about avoiding harm and saving others when

introduced with Trolley-like dilemmas (Levine et al. 2018).

Further, children can balance concerns with honesty and benevo-

lence, judging lies that are meant to benefit others as less immoral

than selfish lies (Fu et al. 2015). Indeed, in some circumstances

the cold truth might be seen as less kind and desirable than a

polite lie. Taken together, these results reveal that navigating con-

flicting moral and social obligations is an important and basic

part of existing and thriving in the social world.

Research reveals that there are many factors that determine

which obligations people choose to follow. For example, one’s

goals will influence what obligations seem important: Fairness

might be mo re important for being identi fied as a good leader

whereas being loyal might be more important for being identified

as a good friend (Everett et al. 2018). The social domain in ques-

tion will also shape the obligations that seem important (Fiske

1992). When it comes to obligations toward notions of equality

and merit, people may think that one should give rewards

based on merit in domains such as pay for work, but prefer equal-

ity in domains such as voting – one vote per person. Cultures will

also dramatically vary in the extent to which they emphasize

moral values like honesty, fairness, kindness, and loyalty, leading

to different balances (e.g., Fiske 1992; Miller & Bersoff 1992).

Indeed, factors such as culture or socioeconomic status may

also influence children’s decisions (Choshen-Hillel et al., in

press; Rochat et al. 2009). Finally, what might make matters

even more complicated is that people’s intuitions about conflict-

ing obligations may change throughout the course of their devel-

opment, with older children believing it is good to overcome

moral conflict and younger children believing it is better not

even to have moral conflict in the first place (Starmans &

Bloom 2016). Future work should explore how cultural inputs

shape both the kinds of obligations that children have and how

they balance conflicting obligations as well as how these obliga-

tions may shift throughout the course of development.

In summary, we concur that obligations are important, but this

is just a starting point for understanding the rich tapestry of inter-

lacing obligations that human beings must traverse. Thus, we

applaud Tomasello for bringing these obligations to the forefront

and for outlining the impo rtance of mutualistic cooperation in

triggering social obligations. However, we think it is also time

to acknowledge the wide swath of obligations that all people

must face and the difficulties caused by having to navigate

between obligations that are as contradictory as they are compel-

ling. We thus propose that a wider framework is needed to

account for how children and adults bal ance their different alli-

ances and social obligations.

How does inequality affect our sense

of moral obligation?

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Philosophy Department, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708.

[email protected] https://sites.duke.edu/wsa/

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002310, e87

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Abstract

Tomasello’s novel and insightful theory of obligation explains

why we sometimes sense an obligation to treat each other equally,

but he has not yet explained why human morality also allows and

enables much inequality in wealth and power. Ullman-Margalit’s

(1977) account of norms of partiality suggested a different source

and kind of norms that might help to fill out Tomasello’spicture.

Tomasello’s new and illuminating theory accounts for many other-

wise mysterious aspects of our human sense of obligation. In par-

ticular, humans (including children, but not apes) are motivated to

share rewards equally with (and only with) partners in joint inten-

tional collaborations, and they object to violations of this norm. He

writes, “Most basically, as children participate in joint intentional

collaboration, they see that: (1) both participants are equal causal

forces in producing the mutually intended outcome; (2) both part-

ners could switch roles as needed; and, most crucially, (3) the stan-

dards of performance for each role (so-called “role ideals,” the first

social shared normative standards) are impartial in the sense that

they apply to anyone in that role” (sect. 2.1.3, para. 4). Later

steps are then presented as “scaled-up versions of the joint commit-

ments characteristic of joint intentional collaboration at the first

step of our account” (sect. 2.2.2.2, para. 4).

This insightful picture does fit many interactions, including

those in cited experiments that Tomasello designed, but it is still

far from complete (no surprise!). As Tomasello notes (note 3),

children also interact with adults whom they are expected to

obey. This obligation to obey superiors does not seem to spring

from collaboration among equals. Moreover, collaborators are

not (1) “equal causal forces” when one works harder and produces

more. We might sense an obligation to show equal respect of some

kind to such collaborators, but they are usually not seen as deserv-

ing equal parts of the products of the collaboration. Furthermore,

partners often cannot (2) “switch roles,” such as when a quarter-

back (or a coach) cannot play lineman on an American football

team. And even when two people can play the same role, the

same standards do not always (3) “apply to anyone in that role.”

When teenagers volunteer to cook dinner, they are often not

expected to cook as well as their parents. My point is not only

that adults do not treat each other as equals when they misbehave

as in bullying, domination, and racism. In addition, children – and

especially adults – accept lots of inequality as morally permitted,

desirable, or even obligatory, as in unequal power relations

between bosses and employees, generals and privates, judges and

defendants, police and citizens, parents and children, and even

wealthy and poor citizens, in some cases. Equality is seen as oblig-

atory at some levels but not others.

Tomasello might try to explain these inequalities in moral

obligations in terms of collective agreements and commitmen ts,

which can lead to social norms and roles that are supp osed to cre-

ate special rights and obligations for some people that others in

the same group do not possess equally. However, not all of the

parties to these collective agreements are equal, and these roles

often do not seem to arise from collaborations between equals.

What collaboration between children and parents gives rise to

the obligation of children to obey their parents? And are under-

privileged groups really equal partners in the collective agree-

ments that give police power over them? And are employee and

employer equal when one accepts a job from the other or

makes laws governing such contracts? Tomasello is right to

bring up social norms and roles, but it is not clear how they fit

within his simple model of collaboration among equals or his

“scaled-up” account of “objective” obligation.

This problem does not refute Tomasello’s central claims. It only

shows that he needs to add some explanation of inequalities in

obligations. One promising way to supplement Tomasello’s theory

would draw upon Edna Ullman-Margalit’s unfortunately neglected

model of “norms of partiality” (Ullman-Margalit 1977). Very

roughly, the basic idea is that some (not all) norms arise from

negotiations among unequals in which privileged leaders use

their greater power and wealth to solidify and extend their per-

sonal advantages, while underprivileged subordinates hold out

for as much as they can get under the circumstances, even if

that is far less than equality. This origin in inequality and cultural

negotiation can explain certain features of those norms of partial-

ity that are hard to explain in terms of collaboration among equals.

One example (not endorsed by Ullman-Margalit but suggested

by others) tries to explain why obligations to help the needy

(whether or not they are not partners in collaborations) are gener-

ally seen as weaker than obligations not to cause harm. Although

some philosophers disagree, studies have shown that most people

judge killing a beggar to be worse (and to violate a stronger obliga-

tion) than failing to help a beggar even when that means letting the

beggar starve. This feature of our sense of obligation could be

explained if it arises from negotiations between unequals. The

rich and powerful discourage a strong sense of obligation to help

the needy, because they have much to lose and little to gain from

that obligation; but they encourage a strong sense of obligation

not to harm, because they are vulnerable to being harmed. They

can be killed just like a beggar, even if they have guards. And the

preferences of the rich and powerful shape our intuitions about

the relative strength of these obligations because the rich and pow-

erful control news sources, churches, governments, and other insti-

tutions that shape the sense of obligation in most cultures.

I am not at all sure that this story is accurate or succeeds in

accounting for this feature of our sense of obligation. My main

point is only that Tomasello’s theory is limited and incomplete

until he adds some new element to account for unequal obligations

and also for peculiar features of our sense of obligation that might

have arisen from inequalities in power and wealth. Some story

about negotiation among unequals (as Ullman-Margalit suggested)

could fit that bill, although Tomasello might have a very different

explanation. In any case, I look forward to hearing how he explains

our sense of obligation in situations of inequality.

Cooperation and obligation in early

parent-child relationships

Ross A. Thompson

Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA 956160-8686.

ra[email protected] https://psychology.ucdavis.edu/people/rathom

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002474, e88

Abstract

Tomasello’s moral psychology of obligation would be develop-

mentally deepened by greater attention to early experiences of

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cooperation and shared social agency between parents and

infants, evolved to promote infant survival. They provide a foun-

dation for developing understanding of the mutual obligations of

close relationships that contribute (alongside peer experiences)

to growing collaborative skills, fairness expectations, and fidelity

to social norms.

Moral development theorists like Piaget (1932) and Kohlberg

(1969) argued for the uniquely generative qualities of egalitarian

peer relationships for the growth of moral understanding.

Influenced, perhaps, by their view, Tomasello has very little to

say about the relevance of parent-child interaction to the develop-

ing moral psychology of obligation. But whereas Piaget, Kohlberg,

and other traditional moral development theorists contrasted peer

cooperation with authority-oriented parent-child relationships,

contemporary researchers have a very different view of these rela-

tionships (Thompson 2012). Infants learn about cooperative

social interaction in the contexts of social play, feeding, and

other shared activ ities of joint intentionality within the family.

They expect parents to act consistently with their roles, and pro-

test when parents fail to do so (e.g., Adamson & Frick 2003). A

developing morality of obligation derives, in part, from the

mutual responsiveness of parents and children in relationships

of reciprocal cooperation.

It would be reasonable to expect that humans’ ultra-

coop erative nature woul d be manifested in early parent-child

interaction, especially because human infants are born more

dependent on the coope rative solicitude of their caregivers than

are other great apes. The species-typical preference of humans

for pursuing goals collaboratively cannot be viewed indepen-

dently of the conditions required for the survival of human

young. Infants’ helples sness contributes to the creation of the

“social cradle” (Carpendale et al. 2013) of cooperative social

inte ractions that contribute to their survival, especially in the

context of alloparenting that is likely to have characterized infant

care (Hrdy 2009). But t he social cradle is also likely to have made

infants exquisite ly attuned to the cooperative responses they

receive and observe in those around them because cooperative

encounters sensitize a helpless infant to whom they could trust

to provide reliable support. Understanding from whom coopera-

tive sol icitude wo uld be received and, by extension, who could be

observed coop erating with others is likely to have enabled infants

to direct their bids for support to appropriate adults (Chisholm,

in press).

This early develop ing attunement to cooperative relations

likely under lies the differential respons es of young infants to

observed “helpers” and “hinderers” argued by Hamlin (2013)

to be a pred icate to a moral sense. It is also a foundatio n to

secure or in secure attachment. Infants’ sensitivity to cooperative

relations changes, of cou rse, with psychological development.

We have argued, for example, that as toddlers acquire an aware-

ness of shared intentionality during the second year, they begin

to understand parental s ensiti vity as the adult sharing the tod-

dler’s goals i n the situation, and they may extend this orientation

to third parties (Newton et al. 2016 ). This is, in Tomasello’s

terms, the shared “we” in paren t-child in teraction extended to

another.

Another developmental transition in parent-child relationships

occurs when young children become capable of – and are moti-

vated to – reciprocate the cooperation they receive. Maccoby

(1984) and more recently Kochanska (2002) have argued that

parental socialization during this period is a process of inducting

the child into a system of reciprocity, manifested in the formation

of a jointly bindin g, reciprocal, and mutually responsive relation-

ship. In this relationship, young children are motivated to coop-

erate with parental requests and incentives not because of threat

or coercion but owing to the reciprocal obligations that close rela-

tionships entail and to maintain relational harmony. Considerable

research in the study of conscience development has tested this

view and shown, in several longitudinal samples, that when

early parent-child relationships were characterized by this “mutu-

ally responsive orientation” children subsequently showed greater

cooperativeness in parent-child interaction, exhibited greater

compliance in the parent’s absence, offered greater prosocial com-

pletions to incomplete stories, and showed a stronger sense of self

as a moral actor (see Kochanska et al. 2019). In Kochanska’s view,

early parent-child relational experience characterized by shared

reciprocity, including felt mutual obligation, launches young chil-

dren on a developmental pathway that includes greater coopera-

tive conduct and responsiveness to shared responsibilities

outside the family.

Early attunement to cooperative relations manifests also in

young children’s development of secure attachment in the context

of sensitive care. Just as a mutually responsive orientation is not

guaranteed in early parent-child relationships, so also parental

sensitivity is not necessarily ensured in any infant’s experience.

Thus distinguishing which parental (and other alloparental) part-

ners could be counted on for cooperative support is important for

the security felt within those relationships and also to the devel-

oping readiness to seek and establish similar relationships of

shared agency with others. This may be one reason why the secur-

ity of attachment is longitudinally associated with many elements

of cooperative obligation that Tomasello discusses, such as coop-

eration with adults and peers, social problem-solving and

conflict-avoidance with peers, as well as fidelity to social norms

and fairness sensitivity in conscience development (Thompson

2019). Although individual differences in the readiness to estab-

lished shared agency with another are not a focus of

Tomasello’

s analysis, individual differences in the human sense

of obligation warrants systematic study. Interestingly, in an

essay written at the conclusion of World War II and thus two

decades before the publication of Attachment, Bowlby (1946) dis-

cussed research documenting the feeling of “We’ ness” evoked by

children’s participation in democratically structured groups, by

contrast with the feeling of “ I’ness” evoked by participation in

autocratically directed groups. His essay urged governments to

devote attention to the developmental conditions giving rise to

human cooperation and conflict management.

Taken together, the young children studied in the evocative

studies described by Tomasello do not arrive at cooperative inter-

actions of joint intentionality with peers and adults de novo. Their

capacities for establishing the “we’ness” of collaborative activity,

mutual obligation, and in-group solidarity are also established

in the attunement to cooperative relations and the mutual obliga-

tions of relationships in the family. Tomasello’s moral psychology

of obligation would be developmentally deepened by consider-

ation of a young child’s long experience of parent-child interac-

tions that provide foundations to a developing sense of social

obligation that precede and are concurrent with the developmen-

tal processes he so evocatively discusses. The unique achievements

arising from the egalitarian context of peer relationships build on

those occurring in the family.

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Author’s Response

The many faces of obligation

Michael Tomasello

a,b

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany

and

Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham,

NC 27708-0086

[email protected]

doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002620, e89

Abstract

My response to the commentaries focuses on four issues: (1) the

diversity both within and between cultures of the many different

faces of obligation; (2) the possible evolutionary roots of the

sense of obligation, including possible sources that I did not con-

sider; (3) the possible ontogenetic roots of the sense of obliga-

tion, including especially children’s understanding of groups

from a third-party perspective (rather than through participa-

tion, as in my account); and (4) the relation between philosoph-

ical accounts of normative phenomena in general – which are

pitched as not totally empirical – and empirical accounts such

as my own. I have tried to distinguish comments that argue

for extensions of the theory from those that represent genuine

disagreement.

As many before me, let me begin by thanking the commentators

for their thoughtful comments and by apologizing to them for not

being capable of responding equally as thoughtfully to all 32 com-

mentaries in one coherent piece in return. I group my responses,

insufficient though they be, around four main topic areas. The

first three topics revolve around the three diachronic time frames

involved: evolution/phylogeny, development/ontogeny, and cul-

tural evolution. I deal with these each in turn, although in a dif-

ferent order. I then address, fourthly, some philosophical issues

raised by commentators who have their doubts that a fully natu-

ralistic explanation of obligation (or any other type of normativ-

ity) is possible at all.

R1. Variation within and between cultures

A number of commentators pointed out the myriad complexities

of the h uman se nse of obligation in its mature form as it oper-

ates in a modern culture, and this is indeed a dimension of

things that I mostly neglected in my target article. I suggest

that there are two aspects to the issue: (1) the participation of

individuals in a collective commitment to the cultural group,

and (2) the participation of individuals in various roles to

which the culture assigns various normative obligations. I

focused mostly on the fir st, whereas the commentators have

noted m y neglect of the second.

Maranges, Baumeister, & Vohs (Maranges et al.) emphasize

that individuals become members of cultures by sharing in its

particular doxa, its shared and implicit presuppositions and col-

lective understandings about the way things are. Kish Bar-On

stresses that indivi dual members of cultures share commitments

and obligations not just to one another but to the culture’s shared

ideals, values, and moral principles. Dunning stresses the glue

that is provided among group members, even in-group strangers,

by a sense of mutual trust. And this was my central theoretical

point at the second step of my story: At some point in human

evolution and human ontogeny, individuals begin to feel a part

of, even to identify with, a social structure larger tha n themselves,

and without this feeling of solidarity/trust and shared identity

there would be no feeling of obligation. As I asked rhetorically:

would we feel a se nse of obligation to invading Martians?

Nevertheless, many commentators pointed out that things are

much more complicated than this. Clark, Earp, & Crockett

(Clark et al.) point out that, within a modern human culture,

individuals feel solidarity with and identify with other individuals

and groups based on many different types of social relations.

Thus, in communal relations of interdependence we feel obliga-

tions to all who contribute in all aspects of life, whereas in

exchange relations the obligations to a buyer or seller, for example,

are quite contained and transitory. Their commentary is a beau-

tiful elaboration of the different forms that obligation can take in

complex societies in which we relate to one another in many com-

plex ways. Franks & Stewart echo this theme but emphasize that

modern humans participate in many different types of groups –

for example, religious, political, and ideological – and these

often have conflicting obligations with which individuals must

deal. They suggest that this complexity may have been there

from the beginning, contributing to the evolution of the human

sense of obligation, especially as different hunter-gatherer groups

interacted with one another across space and time. Anderson,

Ruisch, & Pizar ro (Anderson et al.) emphasize that complexity

also ensues from the distinctions that humans make between pre-

scriptive (what one should do) and proscriptive (what one should

not do) obligations, as they arise in the variegated social relation-

ships and groupings characteristic of a modern culture.

Sinnott-Armstrong points out that many of our obligations are

to people with whom we actually have competitive relationships

and/or asymmetrical power relationships: for example, employer

and employee. He proposes paying attention to “norms of partial-

ity” in which the stronger partner uses her strength to forge a

favorable social norm with a weaker partner who has little choice.

But, following Gilbert, I would argue that the parties creating a

social norm still have some obligation to uphold it, even if

other considerations (e.g., the more powerful partner’s selfish

behavior) lead one of them, in the end, to break it. If I promise

you to do something, and later find out that it would blow up

the world, I should not do it; but I still need to show respect by

informing you that I am breaking my promise.

Killen & Dahl argue that the focus on cultural conformity not

only misses interesting and important group diversity, but actu-

ally misrepresents human morality and its accompanying sense

of obligation. Their point is that human morality is decidedly

not about group conformity, but rather about the individual living

in accordance with her own ideals even if those conflict with those

of the group. And even when an individual does accept some cul-

tural norm as legitimate, it is she who judges whether it is or is

not legitimate from her perspective. Hirsh, Shteynberg, &

Gelfand (Hirsh et al.) echo some of these same concerns, point-

ing out that individuals in modern cultural groups have many

conflicting demands from their many different roles and partici-

pation in different types of groups (as argued above), and that the

essence of morality is resolving these confli cts. Shaw &

Choshen-Hillel also emphasize the many conflicts of obligation

inherent in life within a cultural group, for example, to avoid

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harm to individuals but to be fair to everyone. They opine that

“obligations are important, but this is just a starting point for

understanding the rich tapestry of interlacing obligations that

human beings must traverse.”

This general point is one with which I agree wholeheartedly

(even if I did not emphasize it in the target article). In a previous

publication (Tomasello 2016a, p. 115), I argued that the process

by which individuals construct their moral identities within a cul-

ture is precisely by attempting to resolve conflicting demands:

“Moral beings can never escape the feeling of obligation to

make principled decisions when the norms of their group do

not apply in a straightforward manner or, more problematically,

when they conflict with one another. Individuals must always in

some sense freely assent to and identify with the moral decisions

that they make.” The key is that the individual constructs a moral

identity and thereby takes responsibility for her decisions in adju-

dicating among multiple obligations. Olbrich in fact believes that

we can dispense altogether with Darwall’s notion of external

demands coming from a partner or compatriot as an essential

part of obligation. He believes that such demands are not of the

essence of the matter, but are merely “a second-order compliance

mechanism.” The essence of the matter is that the individual

identifies directly with the joint commitment she has made.

This focus on the positive side of obligation is also emphasized

by Beel er-Duden, Yucel, & Vaish (Beeler-Duden et al.), who

point out that we have emotional support, such as the emotion

of gratitude, for fulfilling our obligations because we want to

(not just because we have to). This is an extremely interesting

point about which I have speculated in the past but which is

not represented in the target article: People operate from aspira-

tional motives to live up to some very high standards (typically

somehow “higher” than is normative in the group, e.g., because

of some religious aspirations), as well as feeling an obligation to

conform to the standards even if they do not want to at some per-

sonal level. The relation between obligational and aspirational

relations to cultural norms and standards is an extremely interest-

ing question for future research.

In addition to the fact that individuals must somehow navigate

a social terrain full of various and possibly conflicting obligations,

both Bender and Buchtel emphasize that, in different cultural

groups, obligations can take much more varied forms than we

Western scientists ever consider. Bender documents examples

from non-Western cultures of social structures that generate obli-

gations of the type we do not normally consider in Western dis-

cussions. Buchtel notes, in particular, that in some East Asian

cultures – echoing the point of the previous paragraph – it is

quite common for individuals to take a more aspirational attitude

to their obligations, and feel joy in fulfilling them. In my target

article, I had a brief section on the lack of cross-cultural research,

and these commentaries serve to emphasize that lacuna even

more strongly.

R2. Phylogenetic origins of obligation

Kaufmann claims that chimpanzees’ group huntin g of monkeys

is fully collaborative in a human-like sense. As evidence, she

cites Bo esch’s description of the process in terms of a share d

goal with individual roles (like the players on a soccer team).

But one can describe the plants, streams, soil, and microorgan-

is ms of an ecosystem as playing roles in that ecosystem as well;

th at does not mean, however, that they understand themselves

to be playing such ro les. The question is how the c himpanzees

understand what they are doing. Other researchers who have

observed chimpanze es hunting monkeys do not describe it

using shared goals an d individual roles, and I myself have

done much experimental research trying to pin down pieces

of the p rocess. Clearly, what chimpanzees are doing is collabo-

rative in a ge neral sense, and clearly it was the evolutionary pre-

cursor of h umans’ more complex forms of col laboration. But it

is missing key elements both in terms of coordination of the

act ivity via joint goals and social/communicative coordination,

and in terms of dividing the spoils via notions of fairness

(Tomasello et al. 2012). Kaufmann goes on to compare the

chim panzee version favorably to modern-day hunter-gatherers.

But when hum an hunter-gatherers are h unting, they do such

things for their partners as give them weapons, clear trails for

them, share information with them, carry their child for them,

repair their weapon for them, instruct them in best techniques,

and so forth (Hill 2002). There are no reports of chimpanzees

helping one another in their group hunting in any way. This

tells you that the c ooperative structure of the huma n version

is somehow different.

Reddy & Wellman believe that the ur-context for the evolu-

tion of a sense of obligation is the mother-child relationship.

They point out that when a child screams, it is in effect “coercive”

because the mother would much rather stay doing what she is

doing; she is obliged to react. But such maternal behavior is wide-

spread in virtually all mammals, and so the question arises why

the full-fledged sense of obligation arose only in the primate lin-

eage leading to humans. Humans’ closest living relatives, chim-

panzees and bonobos, engage in group hunting of various small

mammals (see above), and the proposal here is that this is the spe-

cial context that took huma ns beyond general mammalian mater-

nal relationships. In Reddy & Wellman’s formulation,

“proto-obligatory motivations and expectations may begin with,

‘X helps me because X is my mother/I must help X because X

is my offspring.’ As individuals in group-living species grow up,

this understanding may develop into ‘because X is my friend’

and ‘ because X is Y’s daughter.’” Perhaps. But I simply do not

see how this general reciprocity relation contains the seeds of

an individual who sees that others have legitimate claims on her

by virtue of their mutual interdependence.

AndthisisinmanywaysthesameproblemIhavewiththe

analysis of Rotella, Sparks, & Barclay (Rotella et al.). They

basically propose an account of the origins of a sense of obliga-

tion in terms of reciprocity. I have argue d at length (in Ch. 2 of

Tomasello 2016a) that reciprocity cannot be the psychological

basis of human morality, normativity, and obligation. Their

argument is “the f eel ing of obligation ar ises anytime that failure

to complete the obligated action would result in negative social

consequences” (p. 42). But I would claim that the feeling of obli-

gation can arise only if those negative social consequences are of

a particular type. Yes, concern for reputation would be an

important step along the way, and, as noted in the article,

humans have a con cern for having a cooperative reputation

that othe r great apes do not seem to have. This is a key starting

point. But to get to obligation, I do not believe that concern with

what “they” think of me is suf fici ent because it doe s not confer

the legitimacy needed for a sen se of oblig ation: I agree wi th them

that I should do X, so it is the evaluatio n of “we” that concerns

me. The standard s that we have agreed to are what concern me.

In Rotella et al.’s analysis, is hard to see why I should feel the

need to apologize or make an excuse to someo ne when I do

not fulfill my obligation, or else to feel guilt y on my own. This

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is the special force of obligation beyond “ne gative social

consequences. ”

R3. Ontogenetic origins of obligation

Some commentators with a background in developmental psy-

chology had different proposals for the cradle of children’s

sense of obligation. The two main ones were (1) parent-child

interactions and (2) the understanding of groups from a third-

party perspective (rather than from participation). These will

each be treated in turn, followed by treatment of a few other pro-

posals from a developmental perspective.

R3.1. Parent-child relations as basic

Thompson criticizes the view that children’s earliest sense of obli-

gation emerges from their more-or-less egalitarian interactions

with peers and, in some contexts, with adults. Rather, he believes

that the key is infants’ earliest interactions with their caregivers,

as affectively laden relationships cemented by obligations.

Thompson argues that “early experiences of cooperation and

shared social agency between parents and infants … provide a

foundation for developing understanding of the mutual obligations

of close relationships,” which can then be extended later to others.

Carpendale & Lewis have a similar view, elaborated in more detail

as follows: “Moral obligation is not the result of realizing that others

are equals and therefore should be treated with respect. Instead it is

a natural outcome of mutual affection and understanding. This car-

ing and concern for others is what later develops into a sense of

obligation, first to those close and, later, extended to others.”

Although this is clearly a reasonable view, and has the virtue of

beginning with children’s first important social relations, in the

end I do not believe it can get us to obligation.

The main issue is that the sense of obligation is mainly self-

regulatory. It is “another voice” alongside of humans’ most

basic and natural tendencies for social action and interaction. In

my opinion, children’s earliest social relations with mothers and

other caregivers are forming the foundation for their primary

skills and motivations for interacting with others in all kinds of

ways, both cooperative and otherwise. The sense of obligation

arises from an executive level of consideration that evaluates the

social options and puts its finger on the scale for certain ones

of them (particularly in cont exts of joint agency in which “we”

are evaluating “me”). But this is pot entially an empirical question.

Marshall reports a study (Marshall et al. in preparation) in which

5-year-old and older children expressed the belief that parents

have oblig ations to their children (they have to do things for

their children that others do not). But as Marshall herself notes,

these are older children, and they would already have a group-

minded understanding of the role-obligations inherent in various

social relations in their culture, including parent–child relations.

My view would be that infants and young children understand

parent–child social relations in terms of basic emotional and

social processes of mutual affection and reciprocity, but without

a sense of obligation. Many mammalian mothers care for their

infants and young children as assiduously as do human caregiv-

ers, but neither they nor their offspring come to an understanding

of obligation (as far as we know). So my prediction would be that

if Marshall’s study were done with 2- to 3-year-old children, they

would not think that parents have special obligations to their chil-

dren, above and beyond their natural social affections.

R.3.2. The understanding of groups as basic

Recent studies have found that, in looking at time studies, human

infants have certain expectations about how members of a group

(even if they are represented by shapes on a screen) behave.

Children 3 years of age and older have intuitive theories about

social groups independent of their own participation in them,

and they can even speak coherently about the normative relations

of members: things they should or must do for one another.

Several commentators, therefore, expressed the view that perhaps

children’s early expectations and intuitive theories about social

groups – in contrast to their direct participation in collaborative

social interactions – might be the developmental cradle of child-

ren’s early understanding of how individuals, including them-

selves, are obligated to one another.

Rhodes characterizes my view involving children’s direct par-

ticipation in social interactions as

“inside-out.” That is, they first

feel a sense of obligation to their collaborative partners, and then

generalize outside that to their and other social groups more

broadly. She contrasts this with her own “outside-in” view that

children’s understanding of obligations develops from their

understanding of social groups independent of their own partici-

pation in them. Chalik expresses a similar view, focusing on

children’s intuitive theories of social groups. Both commentators

note that it is possible that both children’s direct collaborative

interactions and their intuitive understanding of social groups

contribute to the process, although, if true, the relation of these

two processes remains totally unexplored. The possi bility that

these two sources develop in parallel is an interesting and plausi-

ble one, but for the moment I remain skeptical that the infant ver-

sion is truly group-minded. More likely, in my view, the kinds of

“outside-in” judgments about the obligations that group members

have to one another that 3-year-old children make are not contin-

uous with infants’ non-normative expectations about the behavior

of similarly shaped dots on a screen. Instead, my proposal would

be that 3-year-olds’ judgments reflect a maturationally structured

understanding that first emerges at around that age: a kind of

group-mindedness that encompasses both themselves in their

own groups as well as others. This is clearly an extremely interest-

ing and provocative question for future research.

In a somewhat similar vein, Liberman & Du Bois criticize my

account for its almost exclusive focus on the developmental

period comprising several years on either side of the third birth-

day. They cite a good bit of the infant literature on children’s

expectations and preferences toward experimental stimuli based

on their apparent group status. But, again, the continuity of

these nonnormative expectations and preferences with children’s

later sense of moral obligation is at this point unexamined.

They go on to point out, in agreement with some of the culture

theorists discussed above, that working out obligations in social

interactions with others is a lifelong process that involves under-

standing not only other individuals but also the social norms of

the group (at whatever level of analysis). Bartsch provides some

very interesting developmental analyses of young children in con-

versation with adults and other children focused on moral issues

and obligation. It is undoubtedly in such discourse interactions

that young children begin the process of understanding how to

interact with others cooperatively in more complex ways across

the lifespan.

R.3.3. Other views

In contrast to accounts focused on children’s intuitive theories of

social groups, Corbit & Moore focus, as I do, on interactions in

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which the child herself participates. They argue that my account

does not really specify the kinds of interactions through which

young children gain the abilit y to form a joint agency with others

in the first place. They argue that infants’ earliest triadic interac-

tions with others around objects provide the requisite experiences

whereby the infant learns to coordinate first-person perspective,

second-person perspective, and the object on which they both

are focused. In my view, this is a reasonable characterization,

but, based on the comparative work with great apes – even

those raised in rich interactions around objects with humans –

I believe we must recognize a role for the maturation of capacities

for shared intentionality that structure these early learning pro-

cesses. Only if one can form a joint goal with joint attention, in

my view, is it possible to take different perspectives in the first

place; otherwise we are just doing and seeing different things.

So, I am not convinced that infants are learning to coordinate per-

spectives before their capacities for joint intentionality mature.

Corbit & Moore also cite evidence supporting the view that acting

together toward a joint goal – even if that goal is not obtaining

resources – leads children to distribute resources more fairly

with others.

Kalish introduces the notion of a reason for action and notes

that children’s earliest moral statements belie a kind of objective

notion: the reason my sister is opening the box is because there

is candy in there. But, he argues, this is a rationality of individual

action. When the child must coordinate with a partner toward a

shared goal, now the reasons must become more person-specific

involving the beliefs and attitudes of the partners vis-à-vis one

another. He notes that if a partner in the collaboration misbe-

haves, he is obligated to give the other a reason and “citing the

obligation is an effective way of restoring coordination. I remind

you of the reason, and expect you to adjust your behavior in light

of it.” This is an elegant way of construing the situation, because,

in my view, while individuals’ behavior is driven by beliefs and

desires, reasons only come into existence as kind of self-regulatory

mechanisms in shared intentionality interactions in which one

individual is obligated to the other already. Rakoczy notes a num-

ber of ways in which my account conflates – or at least fails to

keep separate – children’s sense of an intentional stance, a

group stance, a moral stance, and shared intentionality. He very

articulately illustrates how even a single interaction may instanti-

ate these different stances and capacities such that, over develop-

mental time, they become more distinct aspects of human social

psychological functioning.

Li, Pesch, & Koenig extend the analysis of obligation in

extremely interesting ways to testimonial exchanges and note the

various ways that children holds others accountable – evincing a

sense of obligation – epistemically.

R4. Whence normativity?

Four of the philosophers who have provided commentaries are

those upon whose work I have drawn most deeply and directly

to construct concepts of collaboration that are adequate for

describing developmental changes in young children’s ability to

cooperate with others across the first years of life. It is gratifying

that they all seem to believe that although my account is mis-

guided, it is at least worthy of criticism. The most basic issue con-

cerns the very possibility of a naturalistic account of normative

phenomena, including obligation.

Bratman’s(2014) account of shared intentional activities is

mainly instrumental, with no sense of obligation among partners:

An adult and child can play with the ball together, and “The child

can reason instrumentally concerning this jointly intended end of

playing together without thinking that she owes it to the adult to

give him the ball.” Pettit thus says that “Bratman offers a norma-

tively austere account of how joint action may materialize.” In

contrast, again according to Pettit, “Gilbert’s account is norma-

tively richer than Bratman’s, because it presupposes that the peo-

ple involved in the joint action have mastered a normative

concept: that of a joint commitment.” And, according to

Gilbert herself, “The general notion of commitment at issue is

normative, rather than psychological.” Darwall concurs: “obliga-

tion is a normative, rather than a psychological (or sociological)

phenomenon.” Most psychologists, myself included, find it diffi-

cult to comprehend what obligation and other normative phe-

nomena could possibly be if not psychological (or sociological)

phenomena. For sure, obligation and other normative phenomena

go beyond individual psychology; but that is precisely why we

need a shared intentionality account.

Perhaps because of this non-naturalistic conception of obliga-

tion and other normative phenomena, all four philosop hers seem

to agree that a naturalistic account going from Bratman-like,

instrumentally based collaboration to Gilbert-like, normatively

based collaboration is problematic. Pettit says I have a hard

choice. If I define joint action à la Bratman, then I cannot get

to a normatively richer version involving obligation without

some kind of magical leap. If I define joint action à la Gilbert,

then I build obligation into the definition. Bratman makes a sim-

ilar argument. He claims that collaboration itself – in his “thin”

version – does not lead to the sense of obligation to one’s partner,

but rather obligation arises from joint commitments in Gilbert’s

sense, comprising a “web of assurances” between individuals

that is only contingently linked to collaboration: “So what is

undergirding [obligation] involves a crucial element that is sepa-

rable from intentional collaborative activity.”

But my phylogenetic and ontogenetic account is intended pre-

cisely to get us from Bratman-like collaboration to Gilbert-like

collaboration as cemented by a joint commitment involving obli-

gations. The key is not to think of normative phenomena in abso-

lutistic terms but rather as graded. Joint commitments – as

collaboratively created forms of collaborative self-regulation –

can be weaker or stronger based on several factors. Consider a

recent experiment modelled on the stag hunt from game theory

(Siposova et al. 2018). Children were in a situation in which

they could only get a large reward if they collaborated with an

adult partner. As they were busy collecting small rewards (hare),

the opportunity to collaborate for the large reward (stag) suddenly

appeared at a distance. In one condition, the adult excitedly

looked to the child with wide eyes and then to the stag in the dis-

tance without explicitly proposing any kind of joint commitment.

The idea was that the adult would just be making it clear that she

had just seen the stag and knew that the child had seen the stag

and knew that the child had seen her seeing the stag, et cetera

– that is, they had common ground knowledge that the stag

was now available. But no one explicitly suggested a joint commit-

ment. Nevertheless, not only did the child commit to pursuing the

stag, but if the adult slacked off, the child quite often castigated

her normatively. Our interpretation was that children understood

that it was in their common knowledge with the adult that they

depended on one ano ther for collaborative success and that

they both knew that the stag was present: which, it turns out, is

sufficient to create a mutual sense of obligation. If we both

know together, in common ground, that you need help and that

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I am in a position to provide it (at little cost), I feel the pressure of

obligation.

But clearly this is “less” of a joint commitment than if the

adult says to the child “Let’s work together,” and the child

responds “Okay.” In that case, the joint commitment is proposed

and accepted explicitly and publicly. In the analysis of Pettit

(2018a), the explicitness and publicity provide stronger assurances

because they foreclose the possibility of excuses like “I didn’t

know you were counting on me” and/or “I changed my mind

[without excuse]. ” The point is that joint commitments and

their associated obligations can vary in strength based on such

things as how certain the participants are about the intentions

of the other and how important one’s contribution is to joint suc-

cess. Thus, one can imagine a situation in which one makes a

joint commitment of one type or another, but one’s contribution

is only minimally helpful; for example, I commit to you to join

you at a party, but as only one of 30 people, and as only an

acquaintance, I know that you are not depending on me that

strongly, so breaking the commitment is not that big of a deal;

my sense of obligation is weaker as a result. If joint commitments

and their associated obligations can vary in strength based on sev-

eral factors like certainty of the commitment’s content and its

social importance, then one can imagine that early humans and

young children begin with Bratman-like instrumental collabora-

tion, and then such things as mutuality looks to up the ante in

terms of commitments and obligations, and then explicit proposals

and acceptances make the web of assurances stronger and more

certain. This kind of gradualistic account makes a naturalistic

explanation of the emergence of normative phenomena, including

the human sense of obligation, at least a bit more plausible.

Supportive of this idea, Kachel and Tomasello (2019) reported

an experimental demonstration that implicit joint commitments

lead to a weaker sense of obligation than do explicit ones.

My naturalistic account has two other key concepts as well,

and attention to these might make the account more plausible

to these and other philosophers. The first is borrowed from

Nagel (1970b), and that is the idea that seeing other people as

in some sense equivalent to myself (I am only one among

many other individuals) provides a kind of cognitive, not motiva-

tional, basis for a sense of equal deservingness. I might want more

of the spoils myself, and I might even take them, but I certainly do

not feel that I deserve them because we (self and other) are, in all

important respects, the same in this context. I feel obliged to treat

you as you deserve to be treated. The second concept is borrowed

from Korsgaard (1996), and that is the idea that the notion of

obligation is tied to my cooperative or moral identity. I, as a mem-

ber of a “we” community, judge people normatively. And I can turn

this on myself and judge myself from the perspective of that “we.” It

is simply an empirical fact that it is important to human beings that

they can view themselves, from the perspective of “we” in the com-

munity, positively; they want to be an integral and contributing

member of the “we,” and indeed they feel obliged to do so. This

also lends legitimacy to the social demands that one feels from oth-

ers. I reiterate these two points to emphasize that my account is not

simply that the sense of obligation arises from individuals solving a

puzzle together instrumentally. It arises from a cooperative way of

life, which shapes human understanding of their relation to others

and their need to form plural agencies in their quest to survive and

thrive in their social group.

One final point on this general topic. Darwall takes issue with

the proposal that obligation is a fully psychological phenomenon.

He argues that “it is irreducibly normative and moral, not

empirical.” He does not believe that my account in which children

come to feel a sense of obligation solely from their interdependent

collaborations with equally deserving partners with whom they

feel a sense of “we” is sufficient. He thinks that the normative

sense of obligation presupposes something less of this world:

not an empirical “we,” but an ideal “we.”

I do not disagree with

this, on one level, and indeed I said in my target article that the

larger cultural group (at the second step) was not just a finite col-

lection of individuals but “everyone who would be one of us,” thus

tying the normative force to a kind of idealized characterization of

the group with which I identify. Nevertheless, I do not see what

Darwall could possibly mean by the claim that “Although the

‘sense of obligation’ is psychological, what it is a sense of is decid-

edly not.” The sense of obligation is a sense of what I should do to

comport with the mutual understanding that my partners and I

have about how someone in my position should treat others.

What is not psychological about that?

R5. Conclusion

Reading and responding to 32 commentaries on one’s best efforts

at a coherent theoretical account of something, anything, is a

humbling experience. There exist so many different perspectives

and valuings in the intellectual community that reads and profits

from this journal. “We” in this community will make progress

only if each of us feels as legitimate a kind of we > me sense of

obligation to take all of these different perspectives and valuings

seriously – and, perhaps, to make improvements as a result.

I believe that to make further progress on the questions I have

raised, my account needs to be modified and improved in the fol-

lowing ways:

We need to integrate humans’ various normative attitudes,

including the sense of obligation, with their more basic social

relations, especially those that precede them in evolution and

development, such as parent-child relations and perhaps friend-

ships as the initial and most basic forms of human sociality.

We need to identify the many faces of obligation as it manifests

in the many different social contexts and social roles in a mod-

ern society. Moreover, we need to recognize that there may be

different forms of obligation in different societies with different

social structures and arrangements and seek to identify those.

In terms of ontogeny, we currently have no good account of

how children’s understanding of social partnerships and

groups that they derive through participation in them are

related to their understanding of social partnerships and

groups that they derive through observation of others (from

a third-party perspective). This is a challenging, but ultimately

empirically tractable, question.

Finally is the issue of how far we can go in our understanding of

normative attitudes, including the sense of obligation, empiri-

cally. From its beginnings, philosophy has recognized a kind of

ideal world that is – to some degree and in one way or another –

independent of (scientific) observation and experience. Applied

to the current case: “ought” cannot be explained in terms of “is.”

But I would argue that the human sense of “ought” is a

psychological phenomenon capable of scientific explanation,

and so the question is whether there is still something left

over unexplained. Of course, no explanation of obligation,

scientific or otherwise, can tell us what we ought to do. But we

50 Response/Tomasello: The moral psychology of obligation

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can describe and explain the processes by which people come to

feel that they ought and ought not to do certain things, without

leaving out of account any supposed non-empirical aspects.

In any case, one of the surprises I had in writing this target article

was how little empirical work there was on obligation. I am hope-

ful that the current exchange will lead more scientists and philos-

ophers to investigate this interesting and centrally important

human phenomenon from as many different perspectives as

possible.

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