A Thinking Reed

Month: November 2008

  • The virtues as a response to climate change

    Thanks to Derek for passing along this terrific piece on “Changing the Climate: Spiritual steps for Sustainable Living” by a Benedictine monk, Abbot Christopher Jamison.

    Abbot Jamison thinks that the classical virtues provide an important part of the response to global warming and other aspects of our changing environmental situation.

    This reminds me of a point that Michael Northcott makes in his book A Moral Climate: he says that, for Christians, the practices associated with living more gently on the earth are things that Christians should be doing anyway, such as living more modestly; consuming less; and finding the value of our lives in our relationships with God and others, not in our stuff. Abbot Jamison makes some of the same points.

    The Abbot is clear, that a policy response to climate change is necessary, but we also need responses at the personal and local/communal levels. This goes beyond the kind of “technical” solutions to problems that we’re used to demanding from our leaders.

  • Less Friedman, more Schumacher

    Patrick Deneen calls for an economic re-thinking on the Right.

    It remains to be seen, I think, whether the Right or the Left will be the first to seriously re-examine the assumptions underlying an unlimited growth/unlimited consumption economy.

    The Left has a long history of attending to social justice issues and questions of equality, but, at least in the US, this has usually gone hand-in-hand with a commitment to an ever-expanding economy (partly to underwrite its social welfare programs, partly to expand the benefits of economic growth to those left out).

    Personally, I think we’re going to need the Right’s sense of limits and trade-offs and the Left’s passion for social justice and equality in order to craft a social and economic order that is capable of weathering the end of the cheap energy era.

    Unfortunately, the Right is currently in a state of disarray with most of its hardcore supporters looking to double down on the true Reaganite faith, with an extra dose of culture war vehemence (Palin 2012!).

    Meanwhile, there are signs that the Obama administration is going to end up being staffed by many of the old Clintonite, “third way,” neo-liberal hands who, to put it mildly, don’t seem like the best candidates for re-evaluating the fundamental basis of our economy.

  • Beyond Prejudice 3

    If, following Pluhar, we agree that any reflective agent has reason to affirm that she has basic rights to freedom and well-being, why should that agent extend those rights to others? In other words, must the reflective agent also be a moral agent?

    To start, let’s review why Pluhar (following Gerwith) thinks that any reflective agent is warranted in asserting her right to basic rights to freedom and well-being.

    The shift from the prudential to the moral point of view, according to which others’ interests count too, begins with the agent’s justification of the rights claim made in premise 5 [see previous post]. As Gerwith points out, rights claims, as opposed to bald demands, are claims that one is entitled to or due certain behavior on the part of others; hence, such claims need to be warranted. The warrant for an agent’s claim to basic (“generic”) rights is very straightforward: She has purposes she wants to fulfill; that is, she is a “prospective purposive agent.” This is the most fundamental “practical justifying reason” that can ever be given. As one who wishes to act, she must claim or advocate that she is entitled to the conditions that make action possible. Thus, she accepts:

    (7) “I have rights to freedom and well-being because I am a prospective purposive agent.” (p. 243, emphasis in the original, footnotes omitted)

    Once the agent has accepted premise 7, it’s a straightforward matter–one required by basic logical consistency–to universalize it:

    The particular identity of the agent is not important here […] the fact that she has purposes she wants to achieve is what counts. This inevitably leads to the next step in the argumentative shift from the prudential to the moral point of view: the acceptance of the principle of universalizability.

    (8) “If the having of some quality Q is a sufficient condition of some predicate P’s belonging to some individual S, then P must also belong to all other subjects that have Q.”

    It follows, Gerwith argues, that the agent must hold:

    (9) “All prospective purposive agents have rights to freedom and well-being.” (p. 243, footnotes omitted)

    In other words, if I, as a “prospective purposive agent,” am led to claim my rights to freedom and well-being because they are necessary for me to pursue any goals–that is, my goal-seeking nature is enough to warrant the assertion of rights, then, to be consistent, I must affirm that any purposive agent likewise possesses such rights. This is because they would have the same quality (purposiveness) that warrants my own claim of rights.

    We are led, according to Pluhar, to affirm what Gerwith refers to as “the supreme principle of morality”:

    (10) “Act in accord with the generic rights of your recipients as well as of yourself.” (the Principle of General Consistency) (p. 244, footnotes omitted)

    Astute readers will recognize this as a variation on the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If I recognize in myself basic (generic) rights to well-being simply by virtue of the fact that I have goals I want to pursue, I’m forced, on pain of inconsistency, to recognize those rights in other goal-pursuing agents. If I hold that I have rights, I have to hold that other (relevantly similar) beings have the same rights. Hence the transition from the prudential to the moral point of view.

    But Pluhar wants to show that this applies not only to other human beings but to (at least some) other animals too. In the next post I’ll discuss her argument for why (some) animals count as purposive agents who fall under the scope of this version of the Golden Rule.

  • Jan Lievens – “Forgotten Dutch Master”

    I recently saw this exhibit at the National Gallery. Lievens was a contemporary and friend of Rembrandt who became somewhat overshadowed, partly because some of his work was later mis-attributed to Rembrandt. The exhibit is an attempt to give him his proper due. I thought that his “Raising of Lazarus” was particularly striking. (This image is reversed from the actual painting where Christ is on the left and the onlooking crowd is on the right, but it gives the idea. Note the ghostly hands rising out of the crypt in the lower right.)

    jan_lievens_-_opwekking_van_lazarus1

    Very cool and worth checking out if you’re in DC. (And you can’t beat the price!)

  • What kind of Green Deal?

    Sharon Astyk critiques Al Gore’s climate change wish list for the next administration on the grounds that, among other things, it would require a huge up front investment in technology and infrastructure that may put us over a climate change tipping point because of the fossil fuels that would be required for such an undertaking.

    Astyk, however, thinks that we need to re-think our commitment to economic growth and unlimited consumption. Gore, she says, wants to put the nation on a kind of war footing, with a massive industrial build-out. What she favors, though, is more along the lines of an ecological New Deal, a program that focuses on what human labor can accomplish, along with more modest technological improvements:

    What do we need? Well, there are strategies for dealing with climate change that don’t require a massive investment of fossil energies. They are, of course, unsexy in a legislative sense, mostly because they are enacted by ordinary people, and focus heavily on conservation. On the other hand, as we have seen with the shifts people are making for economic reasons, they provide immediate, dramatic paybacks, with fewer dangers. It is obviously not possible to reduce our energy usage to 0 – we will still need investment in renewable infrastructure, in insulation, and we will still need companies, perhaps car companies, to build rail cars and windmills. But the difference between a gradual build out, that takes into account the ecological and economic costs of this shift, and takes the New Deal, rather than the war as a real model – ie, it emphasizes what ordinary people can do with human energies and small-to-moderate investments and a massive build-out that attempt to keep business as usual.

    A New Deal model of ecological adaptation would consider what we could do with the least possible increase in long-term indebtedness. It would ask our population to make short term, radical sacrifices in order to ensure a better world for their children and grandchildren, to make real the words “for ourselves and our posterity” enshrined in the Constitution. Instead of building out all at once, we’d prioritize our cutbacks, dropping our energy consumption both radically and rapidly – 50% in 5 years is probably feasible. Meanwhile, our investments in renewable energy *and* in people would enable not just short term jobs in boomtowns, but a long term renewable economy – shifting our focus to food, health care, education. Instead of tax incentives that apply mostly to those rich enough to pay substantial taxes, we’d focus on low input, often human powered improvements to our lives – putting people to work building basic storm windows and helping people retrofit their homes.

    I’m not going to try and summarize her long post; it’s well worth reading.

  • Friday metal – Between the Buried and Me, “Alaska”

    Four minutes of shred, friends.

  • Beyond Prejudice 2

    I want to zero in on what I think would be the most controversial steps in Evelyn Pluhar’s argument for rights (both for human and nonhuman animals).

    In this post I’ll focus on the first: the move from an agent affirming her own goals and desires to affirming a right to freedom and well-being necessary to pursue her goals.

    Pluhar reconstructs Alan Gerwith’s argument that any reflective agent must, logically, hold that she has the rights to freedom and well-being. The first two premises are derived from the nature of agency itself–its conative or goal-seeking aspect:

    (1) “I do X for end or purpose E.”
    (2) “E is good.”

    Pluhar clarifies that “good” in premise two doesn’t mean morally good, but simply that the end for which an agent acts must be regarded by that agent as desirable or valuable enough to pursue.

    Pluhar continues:

    When the agent reflects about the nature of agency itself, she will realize that action of any kind has two necessary preconditions or “generic features”: (a) the ability to have purposes or goals and (b) the freedom required to pursue those goals. In order to have goals, one must in turn be alive, have a certain minimal quality of life, and have certain basic mental and physical capabilities. [Alan] Geriwith combines these requirements for the first generic feature of action under the heading of “well-being.” The next premise expresses the fact that the reflective agent who wants to pursue her goals must also value her well-being and freedom and hold that they are good:

    (3) “My freedom and well-being are necessary goods.”

    “Necessary goods” means not only that freedom and well-being are necessary conditions for successful goal pursuit: it carries the agent’s approbation. Note that Gerwith is not claiming that the agent’s freedom and well-being are good: his point is that the reflective agent must hold them, as generic features of action, to be good. Even an agent bent on being enslaved or immolating herself must value the freedom and well-being needed at that moment to carry out her purpose. (p. 241, emphasis in the original, footnotes omitted

    This step in the argument is fairly noncontroversial, I think. If an agent, by definition, regards the end that she acts for as good, then she must regard as necessary goods those things that are preconditions of any action whatsoever, what Pluhar describes as freedom and well-being.

    The agent’s realization that her freedom and well-being are requirements for the achievement of any of her goals leads her to the next premise:

    (4) “I must have freedom and well-being.”

    This premise is not just shorthand for “I must have freedom and well-being if I want to act”; it is an expression of the agent’s “advocacy” of her own freedom and well-being. She wants freedom and well-being because she wants–as does every agent, by definition–to achieve her goals. This inevitably leads her, Gerwith argues, to claim that she is entitled to freedom and well-being:

    (5) “I have rights to freedom and well-being.”

    Note once again that Gerwith is not arguing that the agent has these fundamental, “generic” rights: he is saying that she holds or accepts that she does, as an agent who wishes to pursue her goals. (241-2, emphasis in the original, footnotes omitted)

    This is where things start to get a little tricky. On the face of it, it doesn’t seem to follow from the fact that I regard something as good that I must also regard myself as entitled to that thing, to have rights to it. Simply because I affirm the goodness of freedom and well-being as necessary for me to act, does it therefore follow that I have to affirm my rights to them?

    Pluhar thinks that Gerwith’s argument shows that it does indeed follow:

    Gerwith now uses an indirect proof to show that any agent logically must hold that she has these basic rights. If she were to deny 5, she would also have to deny:

    (6) “All other persons ought at least to refrain from removing or interfering with my freedom and well-being.”

    Premises 5 and 6 are logical correlatives: rights claims are claims against others. But if the agent denies 6, then she must accept the following substitute premise:

    (6′) “Other persons may (i.e., it is permissible that other persons) remove or interfere with my freedom and well-being.”

    However, 6′ contradicts [4]: “I must have freedom and well-being.” (pp. 242, footnotes omitted)

    In a nutshell, the argument here is that if I deny that I have rights to freedom and well-being, then I am committed to 6′–that other persons may remove or interfere with my freedom. But this contradicts 4 above: my affirmation that I must have freedom and well-being. I can’t simultaneously affirm that I need freedom and well-being and that others can take it away from me (other things being equal).

    It’s important to be clear about what Pluhar thinks this argument shows: not that I have the rights to freedom and well-being, but that I’m logically committed to affirming or claiming those rights for myself. For if I don’t, I undercut the very nature of my own agency by denying that I need what are necessary conditions for exercising that agency.

    In the next post I’ll look at how Pluhar/Gerwith thinks we move to the extension of moral rights to others; after that we’ll examine Pluhar’s extension of the reasoning to animals.

  • Beyond Prejudice 1

    I recently finished Beyond Prejudice, a book on “the moral significance of human and nonhuman animals,” by philosopher Evelyn Pluhar. Pluhar is part of a second generation of animal rights/liberation theorists who build on the pioneering work of thinkers like Peter Singer and Tom Regan. Pluhar’s main contention is that attempts to rebut the assertion of moral claims on behalf of animals fail, and that animals (at least of certain kinds) should be regarded as having basic moral rights such as a (prima facie) right to life and a right to the freedom of noninterference.

    Pluhar spends the first part of her book refuting the most common views that deny full moral considerability for animals: the full-personhood view (only rational autonomous agents have rights) and the speciesist view (only members of species typified by rational autonomous agents have rights). She also critiques Peter Singer’s version of utilitarianism on the grounds that it entails that it would be morally permissible (indeed, morally obligatory in some cases) to (painlessly) kill a conscious agent so long as she is replaced by another agent who experiences a net balance of good over evil. In other words, Singer’s utilitarianism is unable to show why individual beings (rather than just their experiences) are valuable and deserving of protection.

    Having, she believes, refuted the full-personhood view, the speiciesist view, and utilitarianism, Pluhar attempts to offer a compelling positive case for animal rights. After all, proponents of the views she has rejected might be willing to bite the bullets of unpalatable consequences, not to mention that people’s moral intuitions about the acceptability of some of these implications may vary.

    So, Pluhar sets out to defend and extend a line of reasoning first elaborated by philosopher Alan Gerwith that, Pluhar believes, shows that animals have basic moral rights. Gerwith’s argument, as Pluhar develops it, goes something like this: any conscious agent with desires and goals who reflects on it must, logically, affirm her right to be allowed to pursue those goals. As freedom and well-being are necessary conditions for pursuing goals, she is committed to affirming her right to freedom and not to have her well-being frustrated, simply in virtue of the fact that she is a purposive, striving (Pluhar uses the term “conative”) agent.

    But, to be consistent, this agent must affirm the right of all conative agents to freedom and well-being. This is because her assertion of her own rights depends on her status as a conative being:

    Reflective agents (full persons) logically must advocate basic rights for themselves because, without the necessary conditions for acheiving their purposes, they cannot have what they regard as good: they cannot have what they want. Universalizability and consistency require that other beings who also could not have what they regard as good without these preconditions must also be accorded such rights. (p. 262)

    It’s because I have desires and purposes that I must press my right to those conditions (freedom, well-being) that I require to pursue them. Not to affirm such rights for myself would imply that others have the moral permission to interfere with my freedom and well-being (since rights are claims against others). But this contradicts my own desires, since I want to be able to pursue my goals (by definition, or else they wouldn’t be my goals!). Reflecting on my own existence as a purposeful agent entails that I lay claim to basic rights to freedom and well-being, since these are preconditions of my pursuing any purposes whatsoever.

    And, if having basic rights is a necessary condition for me to achieve my purposes, then consistency demands that I recognize such rights for any being seeking to pursue its own good and get what it wants. This is because I have affirmed my own purposive nature as a sufficient reason for claiming basic rights (e.g., the rights to life and well-being); consistency requires that I affirm those rights for any purposive agent.

    The category of purposive, or conative, beings, Pluhar emphatically contends, includes animals, at least animals of a certain level of development and sophistication. Animals have desires and goals, and if–as Pluhar has argued–each of us is committed to affirming basic rights for all purposive agents, then the conclusion is inescapable that some animals (Pluhar thinks it includes at least all mammals and probably birds) have basic rights to life and freedom.

    My goal in this post was to summarize Pluhar’s argument, as much for my own benefit as anything; next I’ll offer some thoughts of my own.

  • Water of life

    What my sweetie got me to ease the transition into my (sigh) mid-30s.

    On the bright side, while sharing a birthday with Brother Martin, I did not turn 525.

  • The new Cold War?

    Robert Scheer worries that the old Cold War hawks advising Obama will lead to a ratcheting up of tensions with Russia.