A Thinking Reed

Category: Philosophy

  • What kind of equality?

    Following up a bit on this post, in his book Morals, Reason, and Animals, philosopher S.F. Sapontzis has a helpfully clear discussion of just what animal liberationists are and are not claiming when they talk about “equal rights” for animals.

    First, animal liberationists do not claim that animals do, or should, have all the same rights as human beings. This would be absurd, because animals don’t have an interest in, say, the right to an education or freedom of religion. “Recognizing that rights are tied to interests and that animals do not have all the interests we do (e.g., in religion and education), animal liberationists recognize that it would be nonsensical to seek for animals all the rights we require” (p. 79). Sapontzis identifies three broad rights that liberationists might agree they are seeking for animals: 1) the “right to live their lives according to their nature, interests and intelligence,” 2) the “right to live in a habitat ecologically sufficient for normal existence,” and 3) the “right to be free from exploitation” (p. 79). This is pretty radical stuff, but hardly the same thing as granting animals the same rights as human beings.

    Second, liberationists aren’t committed to saying that the rights of animals do, or should, enjoy equal priority with the rights of human beings. He quotes Peter Singer to this effect:

    A rejection of speciesism does not imply that all lives are of equal worth.[…] It is not arbitrary to hold that the life of a self-aware being, capable of abstract thought, of planning for the future, of complex acts of communication, and so on, is more valuable than the life of a being without these capacities. (quoted on p. 79)

    And, lest this be thought a particular quirk of Singer’s utilitarianism, Tom Regan takes a similiar position in his The Case for Animal Rights.

    In cases of genuine conlfict, then, such as so-called lifeboat scenarios, there is nothing irrational about holding that animals have the sort of basic rights listed above and that human rights should take precedence. As Sapontzis puts it,

    We cannot infer from the principles used when we are forced to choose the lesser of two evils to the principles of moral status in force when such a hard choice is not required. Such emergency principles are invoked not as extensions of common moral principles but as auxiliaries needed because those common principles do not provide satisfactory guidance in these uncommon situations. Consequently, it is not self-contradictory to say that when we can fulfill both human interests (e.g., in food) and animal interests (e.g., in life), we ought (morally) to do so, but when we cannot fulfill the interests of both, we ought (morally) to give preference, within the bounds of fairness, to fulfilling the interests of those beings capable of the greater range of moral actions. (p. 80)

    Talking about “equality” for animals, then, means allowing that they have an equal right, other things being equal, to have their particular interests respected:

    Thus, animal liberation seeks neither to extend to animals the same set of rights enjoyed by humans nor to deny that normal human life–assuming that we ordinarily have a greater range of capacities for making the world a morally better place and will put these capacities into action–can have a greater moral worth than animal life. Rather, animal liberationists contend that just as it would be immoral to follow Swift’s “modest proposal” routinely (and avoidably) to sacrifice some people’s interest in life in order to fulfill others’ interest in food, so it should be immoral routinely (and avoidably) to sacrifice animals’ interest in life for such purposes. (p. 81)

    Sapontzis concedes that what is or is not “avoidable” is an empirical question, and something to be determined on a case-by-case basis. But what is incontestable, I think, is that, by and large, we scarcely give that question any consideration. That’s the difference between animal liberation and anti-cruelty movements, laudable as those might be. Anti-cruelty movements accept the routine use of animals for human purposes as a given; meanwhile, the whole point of animal liberation is to challenge it.

  • Unnecessary roughness

    John Schwenkler, who blogs here, wrote, in a comment to this post:

    [It’s] hard to see [given what I characterized as the “traditional” view of our place in the cosmic scheme of things — ed.] why we, unlike other animals, should be under an absolute (or even less than absolute) obligation not to consume members of other species. Put differently, there seems to me to be a slippery slope between a vegetarian ethic and the desire to “‘manage’ the natural world in order to make it over into an edenic pleasure garden where all creatures are protected” that is not present when one’s position on the rights of other animals is centered on the demand that they be raised in ways that promote their own flourishing, slaughtered humanely, and more generally thought of and treated with reverence and respect. Humanist “exceptionalism”, in other words, lends itself toward “well-meant benevolence” in much the same way as it can be used to excuse the mistreatment of other species, while what you’re (rightly) calling the “traditional view” at once permits us to feed on other animals in ways similar to those in which they are nourished by each other, demands that we do so in a restrained and respectful way that befits our natures and theirs, and prohibits us from trying to manage their environments and make them into something they aren’t.

    I think Clark’s response to this objection would be that refraining from killing and eating animals is not “well-meant benevolence” in the presumptuous sense of aiming to manage the biosphere. Earlier in the book he says that, whatever else may be true about the metaphysical status of us or our animal kin, it surely must be wrong to be the cause of avoidable harm.

    Clark writes (from an excerpt here):

    Consider then: it is not necessary to imprison, torture or kill animals if we are to eat. The laborious transformation of plant proteins into animal protein, indeed, is notoriously inefficient, and wastes a great deal of food that would greatly assist human beings in less carnivorous places. It is not necessary for us to do this: I say nothing of what may be necessary for the Eskimos, for whom the orthodox display a sudden, strange affection when confronted by zoophiles (though the health of Eskimos might be better served by supplying plant-food). It is not necessary for us, and our affection for other human beings would perhaps be better shown by ceasing to steal their plant protein in order to process it into a form that pleases our palates.

    In other words, refusing to eat meat is not an arrogant attempt at managing the natural order, but a refusal to be the cause of other creatures’ suffering when it isn’t necessary. Fundamentally, it’s about leaving them alone.

    This isn’t to say that Clark wouldn’t regard traditional animal husbandry as an improvement over our current practices. But even here he would question whether even “humane farming” really does respect the animals’ natures. Just to mention one point, even humanely raised animals are painfully slaughtered well before the end of their natural lifespan.

    Utilitarians like Peter Singer say that killing an animal (“humanely”) and replacing it with an animal that is, at least from our point of view, pretty much identical, can result in a net gain in utility. So the animal is not wronged if we kill her. But Clark wouldn’t go along with the idea that killing an animal doesn’t count as a harm. At least from the animal’s point of view it would seem to make a difference whether she lives or dies. So, I think there’s still a case to be made that unnecessary (even if “humane”) killing is, at least prima facie, unjustified.

    It’s sometimes said that, if we didn’t raise them for food, domesticated farm animals wouldn’t exist. Whether or not that’s true, it surely doesn’t follow that we can do whatever we like with them, anymore than you can torture or murder your child just because he wouldn’t exist if not for you. Though, if it is true, it may speak to John’s original point: if farm animals are, in a sense, artifacts of human intervention, then it can’t be interference in a natural process if we stop killing them for food. Besides, if we’re really concerned that our domestic cattle, pigs, and chickens might become extinct, we could always set up animal preserves to make sure that their kind will be perpetuated.

    Of course, it would be foolish to expect an act of human forbearance on that kind of scale anytime soon, which is why I personally would be happy just to see a large-scale shift to more traditional methods of farming. And there are plenty of self-interested reasons for human beings to start treating farm animals better (the environmental and health costs of industrial meat chief among them).

  • The progress delusion

    It’s become commonplace to observe that atheism can display many of the same traits as the religions it criticzes, but British political thinker John Gray is a master of exploring the quasi-religious themes in the myth-making of secular modernity, something he’s done for everything from communism, to global capitalism, to human uniqueness, to the idea of progress itself. Here he takes on the “new atheists” (via The Topmost Apple).

  • Spinoza on Christ

    This post from Brandon on Benedict (a.k.a. Baruch) Spinoza’s views on the person of Jesus is really interesting. I spent a lot of time as an undergrad reading Spinoza and even considered myself a “Spinozist” of sorts for a while. It served as a stepping stone from atheism to theism.

  • “A refuge from insignificance”

    For those for whom life means action, the world is a stage on which to enact their dreams. Over the past few hundred years, at least in Europe, religion has waned, but we have not become less obsessed with imprinting a human meaning on things. A thin secular idealism has become the dominant attitude to life. The world has come to be seen as something to be remade in our own image. The idea that the aim of life is not action but contemplation has almost disappeared.

    Those who struggle to change the world see themselves as noble, even tragic figures. Yet most of those who work for world betterment are not rebels against the scheme of things. They seek consolation for a truth they are too weak to bear. At bottom, their faith that the world can be transformed by human will is a denial of their own mortality.

    Wyndham Lewis described the idea of progress as ‘time-worship’ — the belief that things are valuable not for what they are but for what they may someday become. In fact it is the opposite. Progress promises release from time — the hope that, in the spiralling ascent of the species, we can somehow preserve ourselves from oblivion.

    Action preserves a sense of self-identity that reflection dispels. When we are at work in the world we have a seeming solidity. Action gives us consolation for our inexistence. It is not the idle dreamer who escapes from reality. It is practical men and women who turn to a life of action as a refuge from insignificance. — John Gray, Straw Dogs, pp. 193-4

    I don’t post this to endorse Gray’s rather bleak view, but because I think it’s a view worth grappling with. Sort of like how all Christians should sit down and read Ecclesiastes every once in a while.

  • John Gray contra humanism

    Over the weekend I started reading John Gray’s Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. Gray, a British political philosopher, has gone from being a free-market Thatcherite to a critic of global capitalism to a proponent of James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis. If there is a connecting thread here it’s Gray’s resolute opposition to utopianism of every kind, whether it’s communism and socialism, “global democratic capitalism,” or humanisitic progressivism. (In his latest book, Black Mass, he takes on neoconservatism.)

    Straw Dogs is somewhat loosely organized around the theme of human uniqueness. While Gray dismisses Christianity without devoting much argument to it, he reserves the majority of his scorn for post-Christian humanism. It’s cardinal error, he says, is that it wants to maintain an ideology of human uniqueness and progress which is completely undercut by the naturalistic and Darwinian foundations of secular thought. Humanists think that scientific progress will translate into progress in the moral and social spheres, but Gray demurs: “For though human knowledge will very likely continue to grow and with it human power, the human animal will stay the same: a highly inventive species that is also one of the most predatory and destructive” (p. 4).

    The problem as Gray sees it is that humanists aren’t naturalistic enough. They still maintain a view of human nature that is essentially Platonic and Christian: that we are defined by our possession of reason and free will and that these qualities allow us to take charge of our destiny as a species.

    Some of the more extreme versions of this hope envision us “transcending” our humanity, either by means of bio-engineering or artificial intelligence. However, Gray points out, whatever post-human forms of life we may engineer will inherit the “crooked timber” of their creators, since technology is deployed by frail humans. C. S. Lewis made the same point in The Abolition of Man when he said that “the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means … the power of some men to make other men what they please.”

    On naturalistic, post-Darwinian premises, Gray contends, the idea of “the species” transcending its own limitations is abusrd. Moreover, technology is not deployed by disinterested philosopher-kings, but by a confused melange of human interests, some sordid and some noble. It’s just as likely to be used for destructive ends as for beneficial ones.

    Humanism, in other words, is still trying to live off the moral and metaphysical capital of Christendom. A thorough-going integration of the teachings of biology with our world view would lead us to see ourselves not as standing over nature, but as part of it. And an increasingly destructive part of it at that. Gray thinks it just as likely that humanity will face a major die-off as Gaia reasserts herself as that humanity will somehow “master” its environment:

    Darwin’s theory shows the truth of naturalism: we are animals like any other; our fate and that of the rest of life on Earth are the same. Yet, in an irony all the more exquisite because no one has noticed it, Darwinism is now the central prop of the humanist faith that we can transcend our animal natures and rule the Earth. (p. 31)

    The teachings of modern science – from Darwinian evolution to neuroscience – tend to show that human beings are actually far less free and less rational than we – influenced by our Christian heritage – would like to think. The only “salvation” possible, Gray thinks, is to recognize our status as one animal among many, as part of the natural world. Though Gray thinks that perhaps some of the illusions we have about ourselves are ineradicable.

    Though humanism is Gray’s main target, I think it’s worth thinking about what a proper Christian response would be to a view like his. He seems to think that Christian belief is necessarily fading for “modern” people, but I obviously think he dismisses it far too easily. Still, I think that Christian theology, even where it accepts the general outlines of the Darwinian picture, hasn’t yet fully absorbed it. For instance, can theology continue to maintain the sharp distinction between humanity and other creatures? What does theology do with the virtual certainty of the human race’s eventual extinction? How does it address the picture of human beings suggested by some science as far more conditioned by both biology and environment than many traditional theological anthropologies would have it?

  • Flew’s conversion – greatly exaggerated?

    I blogged last week about a new book published by British philosopher and atheist-turned-deist Antony Flew which supposedly details his newfound belief in God (or at least a god of some kind).

    Now, via Ross Douthat, I see there’s some legitimate reason to think that Flew, apparently in declining health and mental acuity, may have been pushed into putting his name on a book that was heavily ghotswritten by some of his Christian acquaintances, in particular Roy Varghese, whose academic credentials seem sketchy at best. At the very least, the article casts serious doubt on Flew’s ability at this point to make and defend the kinds of arguments being attributed to him. And Douthat is right that N.T. Wright putting his name to this project is particularly unfortunate.

  • October reading notes

    A smattering of theology, philosophy, and even some fiction this month:

    The Environment and Christian Ethics by Michael Northcott. This is part of Cambridge University Press’s “New Studies in Christian Ethics” series. Northcott is (at least at the time of this book’s publication) a lecturer in theology at the University of Edinburgh. This text is a nice overview of environmental problems, a survey of the common philosophical and theological approaches to environmental ethics, and a defense of the notion that a traditional Christian outlook can ground concern for, and fairly radical positions on, the environment (as opposed to approaches of a lot of eco-theology which are fairly revisionist). Northcott also argues that social justice for human beings is not in opposition to care for the earth, but an essential component of it.

    Small Is Still Beautiful, Joseph Pearce. Reviewed here.

    Animals and Their Moral Standing, Stephen R. L. Clark. A collection of papers dealing with various aspects of the moral problems associated with non-human animals. Hits most of the uniquely Clarkean themes: a traditionalist philosophical and theological orientation combined with radicial views on animal welfare. (A nice companion to Northcott’s book come to think of it.)

    A Case of Conscience by James Blish. I mentioned this book here. I’ve also just started The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, who seems, to say the least, to have borrowed some ideas from Blish as both books revolve around Jesuit priests who have disastrous encounters with alien civilizations. Russell’s book is contemporary, while Blish wrote his in the 50s. It’ll be interesting to compare the two.

    Early this mont the Templeton Foundation Press reissued Keith Ward’s Divine Action, which had been out of print virtually from the time of its original publication due to a publishing acquisition. This is his account of how modern science and philosophy allow us to give a coherent account of how God can act in the world. While taking some ideas from process thought, Ward goes beyond the view of many process theologians that God acts sheerly “persuasively” on the world. Ward argues that modern physics has given us a picture of the physical world that is much “looser” than that of classical Newtonian physics, and that, in principle, God can act in the world in ways that would make a real difference, but be undetectable by the methods of science. He also offers persuasive and insightful accounts of miracles, the Incarnation, and the relation of Christianity to other religions under the rubric of ways that God acts in the world.

    Also currently working on Wandering Home by Bill McKibben, which narrates his hike from the Champlain river valley in Vermont into the Adiorondacks in New York. Along the way McKibben encounters various friends and acquaintances trying to find new ways of living sustainably, from localist vinters making wine for the region to an Earth First!-er living in an electricity- and plumbing-free shack in the woods. All of this provides much fodder for McKibben’s ruminations on possibilities of treading more lightly on the earth.

    On deck is James Alison’s The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes. I blogged about Alison’s Raising Abel a bit here. Although impressed by the way Alison’s Girard-inspired exegesis sheds new light on the biblical texts, I expressed some skepticism about aspects of his project. But, inspired in part by this review of Alison’s work from Charles Hefling that Christopher tipped me off to, I decided it was worth delving in more deeply.

  • The old new atheism

    Philosopher Antony Flew, a longtime atheist, made headlines a couple years ago when he admitted that he had become convinced of the existence of God. He’s now published a book setting out in detail his reasons for changing his mind in detail.

    Flew hasn’t to my knowledge become a Christian or any other kind of confessional believer. Though apparently this book carries an appendix by N.T. Wright making a case for the resurrection of Jesus.

    Flew is perhaps best known for his article “Theology and Falsification,” a widely reprinted piece which argued that theological language is meaningless because unfalsifiable (excerpt here)

  • Subversive slowness

    Here’s a lovely essay by Rebecca Solnit on “slowness [as] an act of resistance” to the cult of efficiency, speed, innovation, and techno-mastery. (Via James Poulos @ the American Scene)