A Thinking Reed

Category: Animal Rights and Issues

  • Of wolf and man

    Thanks to Jeremy for tipping me off to this review by John Gray of philosopher Mark Rowland’s new book The Philosopher and the Wolf.

    Rowlands lived with a wolf he adopted for many years and learned lessons from him about what it meant to be happy and to be human. He also makes the provocative claim, with which Gray concurs, that, with humanity, a new possibility for evil enters the world, and that when humans are compared to wolves it’s the wolves who are getting the short end of the stick:

    In evolutionary terms humans belong in the ape family, and if apes are intellectually superior to other animals it is because of their highly developed social intelligence. Some of the most valuable features of human life – science and the arts, for example – are only possible because of this intelligence. But it is also this type of intelligence that enables apes – some kinds of ape, at any rate – to engage in forms of behaviour that, when more fully developed, embody types of malignancy that are pre-eminently human. As Rowlands puts it: ‘When we talk about the superior intelligence of apes, we should bear in mind the terms of this comparison: apes are more intelligent than wolves because, ultimately, they are better schemers and deceivers than wolves.’ The ability to scheme and deceive requires a capacity to enter the minds of others, which other animals seem not to possess in anything like the same degree. But the human capacity for empathy brings something new into the world – a kind of malice aforethought, a delight in the pain of others that aims to reduce them to the condition of powerless victims.

    Gray, that inveterate critic of optimistic rationalist humanism, likes to point out that, once you leave behind the metaphysics of Christianity, you really have very little solid ground to stand on in asserting the innate superiority of human beings to other animals. C.S. Lewis made a similar point in his writings on vivisection: if might makes right in justifying cutting up animals for our own benefit, why wouldn’t it also justify cutting up “defective” humans or class enemies or other races? In Lewis’s view, it was the Christian worldview that undergirds both justice for humans and mercy toward other animals.

    (Incidentally, Rowlands’ Animals Like Us is one of the best introductions to animal rights issues I’ve read. It’s rigorous, but clear and straightforward.)

  • Ape revolt!

    This piece is both incredible and infuriating. Incredible because it describes in detail how intelligent the orangutans are in devising increasingly sophisticated ways to escape from their jailers (oops-“keepers”) at the San Diego Zoo. Infuriating, well, because such obviously intelligent and social creatures are being held captive against their demonstrated preferences. Really, what is the justification for this?

    It’s interesting that one of the arguments against the case for animal rights is that animals lack the ability to assert or claim their own rights (to life, freedom, etc.). I don’t accept this argument as a matter of principle because I think there are many cases where sentient beings are owed moral considerability even if they can’t make those claims on their own behalf (infants, the disabled, other “marginal” cases). But, supposing you do accept that principle: here’s an example clear as day of animals claiming their rights to freedom and self-determination.

    (Via Jesse Walker at Reason’s Hit & Run)

  • Carter on Singer

    Joe Carter is, I think, too hard on Peter Singer in this post. Singer is wrong about a lot of stuff–his views on disability and on bioethics in particular. But as much as anyone he deserves credit for bringing the abuses of animals in factory farms to public attention, not to mention his work on our moral obligations to very poor people in other countries.

    Too many people get the impression that morality is a zero-sum game and that, in particular, raising the status of animals means lowering the status of humans. Singer has contributed to that impression with his jeremiads against the “sacredness” of human life. But they’re logically distinct issues. Tom Regan’s version of animal rights, for instance, doesn’t have any of the unsavory implications for “marginal” humans that Singer draws from his version of utilitarianism.

  • Mill, animals, and liberalism

    Gaius asks whether a liberal who traces her intellectual lineage to J.S. Mill–i.e. who sees the purpose of politics as permitting the widest possible scope for human liberty consistent with the liberty of others–can consistently be in favor of laws for preventing cruelty to animals or protecting the environment:

    how [did] liberals, historically, either politically allied themselves with or actually became, some of them, animal welfare advocates, animal rights advocates, conservationists, protectors of endangered species, environmentalists, or nature preservationists, all of whom lend weight to some value or other, different from individual liberty, against human liberty[?]

    Historically, I think the answer to Gaius’s question is pretty clear: Mill, and his mentor Jeremy Bentham, were in fact advocates for reform in the treatment of animals. It was largely liberals like Bentham and Mill who brought concern for animal well-being into the mainstream of moral philosophy as well as into the political arena.

    Bentham and Mill were utilitarians and justified the arguments on behalf of animals on the grounds that, what counts morally is maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. Bentham famously said that what matters morally with respect to animals is not whether they can speak or think, but whether they can suffer. Sentient beings are morally considerable because it matters, from their point of view, what happens to them. And while I’m not as familiar with Mill’s thought in this area, it appears, at least from this excerpt, that he followed Bentham in this.

    Philosophically, the different branches of the animal rights tradition can be traced to the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill and to the liberal individualism of Kant (as well as the liberal aspect of Mill’s thought; whether there’s a tension between Mill’s liberalism and his utilitarianism is an interesting question). Peter Singer is the most prominent representative of the utilitarian strain, while Tom Regan represents a Kantian approach.

    These two traditions employ somewhat different principles, which sometimes lead to different conclusions. For instance, Singer’s utilitarianism emphasizes the equal consideration of interests, meaning that animal suffering has to be treated the same, morally speaking, as relevantly similar human suffering. However, Singer’s view also allows for killing animals (or disabled humans) if it can be done painlessly while retaining the same amount of overall utility. Regan’s more Kantian position is that animals, as “subjects-of-a-life,” possess basic rights to life, freedom, and well-being and must be treated as ends in themselves. Both positions contend that “speciesism” is an invidious distinction akin to racism or sexism.

    Essentially, the animal rights advocate argues that liberal principles–such as equal consideration of interests, rights to life and liberty–ought, logically, to be applied to animals (or at least certain animals). This is usually because it is held that there’s no good reason for drawing the line of moral standing at the species boundary. Thus the animal rights position can properly be thought of as an extension of liberalism rather than a repudiation of it.*
    _____________________________________________________________________
    *The case of the environment may seem trickier, but it might be argued that a liberal could support environmental protections insofar as they are necessary to avoid harm to sentient beings–human or non-human. Liberals and animal rights advocates would, however, disagree with so-called deep ecologists who locate moral value primarily in ecosystems rather than individual sentient creatures.

  • Gourmands, aesthetics, and ethics

    If more proof was needed that I’m not hip, I’m sorry to say that I never read David Foster Wallace–and indeed only vaguely knew who he was–before his suicide this past September. But I recently came across this incredible piece of his published in 2004 in Gourmet magazine. Incredible not least because it was actually published in Gourmet. Wallace was assigned to cover the Maine Lobster Festival and spends the better part of the article weighing the moral pros and cons of boiling alive sentient beings for our gustatory pleasure:

    Given this article’s venue and my own lack of culinary sophistication, I’m curious about whether the reader can identify with any of these reactions and acknowledgments and discomforts. I am also concerned not to come off as shrill or preachy when what I really am is confused. Given the (possible) moral status and (very possible) physical suffering of the animals involved, what ethical convictions do gourmets evolve that allow them not just to eat but to savor and enjoy flesh-based viands (since of course refined enjoyment, rather than just ingestion, is the whole point of gastronomy)? And for those gourmets who’ll have no truck with convictions or rationales and who regard stuff like the previous paragraph as just so much pointless navel-gazing, what makes it feel okay, inside, to dismiss the whole issue out of hand? That is, is their refusal to think about any of this the product of actual thought, or is it just that they don’t want to think about it? Do they ever think about their reluctance to think about it? After all, isn’t being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one’s food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet? Or is all the gourmet’s extra attention and sensibility just supposed to be aesthetic, gustatory?

    You have to think they got some angry letters to the editor after this one.

  • Of Palin and poultry

    I’m with Jim Henley – there’s nothing particularly disturbing about this Sarah Palin interview at a turkey farm (well, except insofar as Sarah Palin is inherently disturbing). Where exactly do people think Thanksgiving turkeys come from?

    Jim’s also right that the farm where the interview takes place is, by all appearances, far more humane than, say, this.

    I did find it grimly amusing how the MSNBC anchor introduced the clip by saying that the video had been “sanitized” as much as possible, but that parents might want to have kids leave the room, etc. If animal slaughter is so unspeakably horrible, maybe there’s something, y’know, wrong with it? At the very least, isn’t there a problem if you think that our food production process is so awful that it needs to be shielded from public view?

  • Tom Turkey in hell

    Surprise! When you reduce animals to the status of things, they tend to get treated like…things.

    I don’t want to get all vegetarian self-righteous here, but here’s a thought. Thanksgiving is, among other things, about, well, giving thanks to the Author of our being. And surely part of that thanks-giving is treating that which we receive from the Creator’s hand (in this case, animals for our sustenance) as gifts to be reverently received and treated accordingly. Do we do honor to the Creator by turning his creatures into commodities, things in a mechanized process that denies their very existence as living, sentient beings? I hope that we can all answer “no” to that.

    (By the way, this is an example of good work by PETA, despite their sometimes questionable marketing tactics.)

  • Beyond Prejudice 4

    In the previous posts we saw Pluhar make a two-step argument for moral rights. First, she argued that any agent, reflecting on the nature of her own agency, must advocate for herself basic rights to freedom and well-being, simply because she is a purposive agent. Second, Pluhar contends that the principles of consistency and universalizability require that agent to affirm moral rights for other purposive agents.

    But, to get to the heart of Pluhar’s project, what does this have to do with nonhuman animals? How does she make the case for extending generic rights to freedom and well-being to them?

    Pluhar contends that “all preferentially autonomous agents” meet the requirement that is sufficient for possessing basic rights. Preferentially autonomous agents are simply “beings who act to satisfy preferences” (p. 249).

    This class of beings is considerably larger than the subclass of reflective, rights-claiming agents. Preferentially autonomous beings need some minimal requirements in order to function, regardless of their level of intellectual sophistication. As Paul Taylor points out with regard to the sense of freedom relevant to this issue, absence from constraint is essential to nonhumans and humans alike: “[Absence of constraint] is a concept of freedom that is of central importance for every creature which has a good of its own to realize. For being free in this sense is being in a position to be able to preserve one’s existence and further one’s good, and being unfree in this sense is being unable to do these things.” Equally essential is life and the capacities that allow one to pursue that life when one is given a chance to do so: minimum “well-being.” Following Gerwith’s line of reasoning, it seems that agents as such, not just conceptually well-developed agents, should have the rights of freedom and well-being attributed to them. (p. 249, emphasis in the original, footnotes omitted)

    As we saw earlier, Pluhar follows Gerwith in arguing that being a purposive agent–having things one wants to do–is by itself sufficient for claiming basic rights, and, to be consistent, attributing such rights to any being meeting that condition. Undeniably, many nonhuman animals meet this condition–they have goals and wants; they seek to pursue them; and they require minimum conditions of freedom and well-being in order to do so. Once they’ve crossed this threshold, their relative intellectual inferiority just isn’t relevant when it comes to attributing basic rights to them.

    This view has the merit, lacking in views Pluhar has rejected (such as the full-personhood view), of explaining why so-called marginal humans also have basic moral rights:

    All consciously conative beings are goal directed; they have preferences or purposes that they want to have satisfied. This holds for very young and mentally limited humans just as much as it holds for the most intelligent of human agents. The intelligent agent must logically recognize, Gerwith argues, that those whom he calls “marginal agents” are individuals striving to survive just as she is, seeking shelter, food, drink, and companionship. As such, they are due full moral consideration. Purposiveness is the key similarity between these others and normal human adults; it justifies the attribution of rights to the former by the latter, despite the fact that the individuals compared differ greatly in their ability to fulfill their purposes. (p. 250, emphasis in the original, footnotes omitted)

    (Interestingly, this leads Pluhar to a relatively conservative view on abortion: she argues that a fetus, once it has achieved sentience and purposiveness, has a prima facie right to life “in the last half of gestation (earlier, if evidence warrants it)” (p. 253). Though, on her view, abortions prior to sentience would not be wrong (much less should they be legally prohibited), and abortions after sentience occurs might be right if “the woman is protecting her own physical or mental health by making this choice” (p. 253).)

    To try and put Pluhar’s case in a somewhat more intuitive way: you could see it as a variation on the Golden Rule (a comparison she makes at one point). Reflecting on our own situation, we claim the right to pursue our own lives and seek our flourishing, which requires at least a minimum level of freedom and well-being. And recognizing in all sentient, purposive creatures a similar striving to live their own lives and seek their own goods, we should treat them as we would like to be treated if our situations were reversed. This doesn’t really seem like much to ask when you think about it. It may be that our chief resistance to accepting the basic rights of other creatures to live their own lives isn’t so much the intellectual difficulty as that it would require a radical revision to many of our current practices.

  • 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.

  • 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.