Readers may be interested in this new(ish) blog: The Moral Mindfield. The about page says that it is “intended as an open forum for the discussion of the ethical dimensions of society and culture. …informed by philosophy, theology, and social theory, as well as other academic disciplines.” If I’ve got this right, the contributers are students at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and include Marilyn of Left at the Altar. Worth checking out.
Category: Philosophy
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The radical Lewis
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that many C. S. Lewis fans–maybe especially his many evangelical admirers–don’t know that Lewis wrote a pamphlet for the British Anti-Vivisection Society. This essay, reprinted later in God in the Dock, anticipates some key arguments since made by philosophical proponents of animal rights.
Lewis posits a dilemma for the defender of animal experimentation: either they hold that humans are metaphysically superior to (non-human) animals (he identifies this with the Christian view), or they believe that there is no inherent metaphysical difference between humans and other animals (he calls this the naturalistic or Darwinian view).
If one takes the first view, Lewis argues, it by no means follows that humans are entitled to treat animals any way they wish. “We may find it difficult to formulate a human right of tormenting beasts in terms which would not equally imply an angelic right of tormenting men” (“Vivisection,” God in the Dock, reprinted in The Collected Works of C. S. Lewis, p. 452). Or, we might add, an extraterrestrial right of tormenting men. Further, “we may feel that though objective superiority is rightly claimed for man, yet that very superiority ought partly to consist in not behaving like a vivisector” (p. 452). This turns the superiority argument on its head; Andrew Linzey has also made much of this line of thinking (see his Animal Theology and Why Animal Suffering Matters, among other works).
Of course, as Lewis notes, most of those who experiment on animals are not Christians with a belief in the metaphysical superiority of humanity, but Darwinian naturalists who see humans as just one species of animal among many (albeit one with certain unique characteristics). “We sacrifice other species to our own not because our own has any objective metaphysical privilege over others, but simply because it is ours” (pp. 452-3). But Lewis is quick to point out that if there is no great metaphysical gulf separating human from non-human animals, what reason is there to draw the line at the species barrier? If all that justifies our preference for our own species is sentiment, than wouldn’t sentiment also justify a preference for our own nation, class, or race? “Once the old Christan idea of a total difference in kind between man and beast has been abandoned, then no argument for experiments on animals can be found which is not also an argument for experiments on inferior men” (p. 453).
This argument similar to the one known as the “argument from marginal cases”–i.e., many non-human animals have the same cognitive abilities as so-called marginal humans (e.g., the severely mentally handicapped), so why are we justified in, say, experimenting on animals but not in experimenting on “marginal case” humans?
Of course, it’s open to the naturalist to admit the force of the argument and accept that we aren’t justified in experimenting on “marginal” humans or non-human animals. (James Rachels takes such an approach in his book Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism.) But this just concedes Lewis’s main point: once you do away with the “metaphysical” distinction between humans and animals, there is no rational ground for treating humans and non-human animals differently simply because they belong to different species.
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Human “exceptionalism” as moral exclusion
In his review of Wesley Smith’s book that I linked to below, Angus Taylor puts his finger on exactly what has long bothered me about Smith’s rhetoric of “human exceptionalism”:
Even if can be shown … that all human beings deserve an elevated moral status, it is not clear why this elevated status should entail the right to exploit, kill, and consume beings of lesser status – especially in those instances where no human vital needs are at stake. The issue of moral agency is a red herring. There is no logical requirement that all humans be moral “by nature” in order for every one of them to be entitled to respectful treatment. If not Tom Regan’s “subject of a life” theory, then surely Gary Francione’s sentience-based rights view would give Smith all he desires in terms of recognizing the equal inherent worth of all humans, including the mentally handicapped. By recognizing sentience as a sufficient condition for the right to be treated with respect, Smith could make a rationally defensible argument against the abuses to which he believes many incapacitated humans are vulnerable. But his doctrine of human exceptionalism cannot countenance just any ethical view that protects humans, for it is not enough to include all humans within the moral community – one must simultaneously exclude all non-humans. And this is crucial: human exceptionalism is at least as much about whom we are determined to exclude from the moral community as about whom we wish to include within it.
Smith is able to get so much traction against proponents of animal rights/liberation largely by waving the red flag of “dehumanization.” In his view, elevating our treatment of animals necessarily involves downgrading our treatment of humans. But as Taylor points out, there’s just no logical reason for thinking this.
It should be added, though, that at least part of the blame for this might fall on the “father” of the animal rights movement himself–Peter Singer. Singer has long staked out controversial views on abortion, infanticide, euthansia, the rights of the disabled, and other “life” issues, which has led some to think that his arguments for animal liberation are simply part of an agenda to debase the value of human life. I think this is misleading–both Singer’s positions on animal liberation and his bioethical views derive from a prior commitment to a particular form of utilitarianism. On this view, the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by its overall consequences, understood in terms of the satisfaction of preferences. From this it follows, argues Singer, that life–whether human or animal–is not inherently “sacred.” Rather, whether it’s wrong to end a life has to be judged in terms of the prospects for preference-satisfaction of all affected parties. Nevertheless, what some may consider admirable philosophical consistency, others regard as a dangerous cheapening of human life.
But Singer’s view is by no means embraced by all who advocate better treatment for animals (nor, for that matter, do all utilitarians embrace all of Singer’s more controversial bioethical views). As Taylor points out, a rights-based view such as that of Tom Regan elevates the moral status of animals without “demoting” human beings to some lesser status. I’d add that theological views like Andrew Linzey’s function in a similar way; in his book Why Animal Suffering Matters, Linzey is quite critical of Singer’s utilitarianism and its implications for vulnerable human life.
None of this takes away from the fact that Smith is generally quite sloppy in his engagement with the arguments of pro-animal rights/liberation thinkers. And I agree with Taylor that Smith’s version of “human exceptionalism” largely seems crafted to justify the ongoing human domination and exploitation of non-human animals.
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Friday links
– Chris Hayes: Postcard from Palestine
– Endangered red wolves being hunted to extinction
– Tea partiers fantasize about a “constitutionally pure” government
– Jean Kazez on Sam Harris’s book The Moral Landscape
– On not really believing in heaven
– Corporations gain privacy rights as people lose them
– Soldiers against torture
– A rabbi writes about speaking out against anti-gay prejudice
– A review of Wesley Smith’s anti-animal-rights book
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A world without carnivores?
I meant to link earlier to this piece from the NYT Opinionator blog by philosopher Jeff McMahan. He poses the following question:
Suppose that we could arrange the gradual extinction of carnivorous species, replacing them with new herbivorous ones. Or suppose that we could intervene genetically, so that currently carnivorous species would gradually evolve into herbivorous ones, thereby fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy. If we could bring about the end of predation by one or the other of these means at little cost to ourselves, ought we to do it?
McMahan concedes that we lack both the knowledge and wisdom to carry this out, but he speculates that we may have it one day and that decisions about which animal species to save and which to allow to become extinct may be forced on us by our ever-increasing environmental footprint. He argues that it makes sense to see carnivorous predation as a “flaw” in nature, one that we would–other things being equal–be better off without.
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Whitehead on value and subjectivity
A quick addendum to the process theology post: I decided I was interested in finding out a bit more about Whitehead’s theory of value because of the role value plays in his metaphysics, and – lo and behold! – there’s an article by John Cobb called “Whitehead’s Theory of Value.” As a bonus, the first part also provides a relatively lucid overview of Whitehead’s metaphysics–particularly his rather startling claim that everything that exists is composed of events that possess “subjectivity” and what he means by that.
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Summary thoughts on process theology
Last night I finished Cobb and Griffin’s introduction to process theology, so I wanted to get some thoughts down on the general Whiteheadian perspective. I think the expanded name sometimes used – process-relational theology – is actually more helpful because both elements, process and relation, are key to understanding what this school of thought is trying to say.
First, let’s talk about process. For Whitehead, the basic constituents of reality are not things (“substances” in much traditional philosophical parlance), but moments, or occasions, of experience. The things we encounter in the world–rocks, trees, birds, people–are actually collections of occasions spread out in space and extended through time. Each occasion is an event in which influences of past experience are incorporated and synthesized into a new moment of experience (Whitehead calls this a concrescence). So, instead of thinking of myself as a thing (whether it be a body or a soul, or some combination) that has experiences, I am a series of experiences, each of which has a “mental” and “physical” pole, with no underlying substratum needed.
Whitehead’s view differs from that of, say, David Hume (who similarly characterized the human self as a series of experiences) in a few ways. First, unlike much classic empiricism, Whitehead’s view is that experience comes to us already value-laden. The elements of the past which are incorporated in each new occasion of experience come with certain affective or emotional tones. Second, the act whereby these elements are incorporated into a new occasion involves a genuine element of novelty or creative synthesis. Cobb and Griffin call this creative transformation. The present is influenced, but not determined, by the past; each occasion is an opportunity for synthesizing elements of the past into a higher harmony that reconciles seemingly opposed values into something new. In Whitehead’s terminology, each occasion prehends its environment, which is comprised of past occasions, and synthesizes the elements of that environment in light of its subjective aim of coordinating those elements into a genuinely new moment of experience. Reality consists of these ongoing processes of incorporating the past and creating novelty.
Turning to relational, the important point here is that, because what we have, according to Whitehead, is not a world of independent substances bumping up against each other, but a world of porous occasions of experience, relationships are fundamentally constitutive of the entities that make up reality. Each occasion is influenced by, and in fact incorporates influences from, prior occasions. Not only is there no bright boundary between “me” and “my body” (because my soul and body are both streams of mutually influencing occasions), but there is similarly no bright boundary between “me” and “you” or “me” and “the environment.” (As has often been pointed out, Whitehead’s thought has affinities with Buddhism.) Because of the thorough-going relational character of existence, no one entity is able to exert unilateral unconditional power over others; we are all interpenetrated and influenced by everything else, at least to some extent.
Which brings us to theology. According to Whitehead, although God plays a special role in the world, God is not exempt from the general metaphysical principles exemplified by other entities. This puts him at odds with a lot of theology, which has placed God beyond all human categories and conceptualizations. For Whitehead, God is the ground of order in the world and of novelty. This happens through God’s persuasive “lure” of occasions into new and better forms of creative synthesis. Whitehead calls this God’s initial aim, which correlates to the subjective aims of creatures. God contains in God’s eternal nature all conceptual possibilities; by presenting these to the world, God influences occasions into realizing new forms of existing.
Cobb and Griffin describe the process of creation as God enticing very primitive elements into higher and more complex forms, eventually resulting in the long evolutionary development of the cosmos. Because God’s power is exercised in this persuasive fashion, it is also limited. Even God can’t unilaterally determine the outcome of events, a fact which plays a pivotal role in process thought’s response to the problem of evil. Nevertheless, God is present in each moment, as the lure that calls each occasion to higher forms of harmony and intensity of experience.
According to process thought, God, like all other existents, is related to everything else that is and is genuinely affected by it. Contrary to the tradition, which holds God to be impassible, or unaffected by anything that happens in the world, process thinkers sees God as experiencing what creatures experience. Whiteheadian theism is sometimes referred to as “dipolar” because it sees God as having two aspects: an eternal aspect that Whitehead refers to as God’s primordial nature (and which, as mentioned above, includes God’s eternal apprehension of all the possibilities that can be realized in existence) and a temporal aspect that he calls God’s consequent nature. This consequent aspect is comprised of God’s experience of what happens in the world. As creatures realize new and higher forms of creativity, God’s life is enriched. As a corollary, as creatures suffer or inflict suffering, God suffers. (God is the “fellow-sufferer who understands” to use Whitehead’s oft-quoted phrase.)
It’s difficult to assess Whitehead’s thought because it constitutes a unique metaphysical perspective, comparable in scope to Platonism or Aristotelianism. And I’m not familiar enough with the Whitehead corpus (particularly his magnum opus Process and Reality) to provide a particularly informed critique. But I think I can say a few things about its appeal and some possible limitations.
First, Whitehead’s perspective allows us to see the universe as a unitary whole of interrelated and mutually influencing entities. This is more consistent with contemporary evolutionary and ecological thought than much traditional metaphysics and theology. It’s no coincidence that process theologians, and those influenced by process thought, have been at the forefront of the science-religion dialogue and the promotion of environmental consciousness in Christian theology. Second, the view of God propounded by process thought avoids many of the pitfalls of traditional forms of theism, particularly with respect to the problem of evil. And this view portrays a God whose character is in some ways more consistent with the God of the Bible, particularly in God’s nature as “creative-responsive love.” This resonance of process thought with the biblical view of God is the response of process theologians to accuastions that they’re more philosophical than theological. And Whitehead himself saw the life of Jesus as one of the pivotal events in history revealing a God of persuasive love rather than domineering power.
As far as weaknesses go, two stand out to me. First, the Whiteheadian system, with its forbidding jargon and abstruse speculations, can be difficult for outsiders to penetrate, and one wonders about the usefulness of yoking Christian theology to a seemingly esoteric form of metaphysics. Second, the process-relational model of God has elements that seem to clash with what many have taken to be essential points of Christian orthodoxy. Primarily these are in relation to its views of divine power and passibility. Critics have wondered, for example, if the process God has the resources to ensure the ultimate triumph of God’s purposes–a victory that is indicated by the Bible and the consensus of Christian tradition.
I’m not sure either of these weaknesses is fatal to the process-relational project, though. Regarding the first, it is possible to incorporate Whiteheadian insights without adopting wholesale process thought’s metaphysical apparatus. For example, the scholar of science and religion Ian Barbour has been influenced by process thought, but largely avoids the Whiteheadian jargon in offering a metaphysical description of the universe as an evolutionary process characterized by emerging levels of complexity and the interplay of necessity and creativity. Similarly, Keith Ward has incorporated elements of dipolar theism into his conceptualization of God, such as passibility and God’s responsiveness to what occurs in the world, without accepting in its entirety the process view of God’s power. In sum, I’d say that process thought has provided a helpful and necessary impetus to re-thinking inherited notions about God and God’s power and relationship to the universe, a necessity also imposed by developments in modern thought that theology hasn’t always been willing to seriously grapple with.
References:
Ian G. Barbour, Science and Religion
John Cobb, Jr., and David Ray Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition
Keith Ward, Pascal’s Fire: Scientific Faith and Religious Understanding
Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making
“Process Theism” at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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Whitehead on theological revisionism
I don’t know why I’ve suddenly been interested in reading Whitehead, but after Adventures of Ideas I turned to an earlier work–Religion in the Making. Here you can see the germs of a “Whiteheadian” doctrine of God, particularly in his critique of traditional notions of omnipotence and transcendence:
This worship of glory arising from power is not only dangerous: it arises from a barbaric conception of God. I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the bones of those slaughtered because of men intoxicated by its attraction. This view of the universe, in the guise of an Eastern empire ruled by a glorious tyrant, may have served its purpose. In its historical setting, it marks a religious ascent. The psalm quoted [Ps. 24] gives us its noblest expression. The other side comes out in the psalms expressing hate, now generally withdrawn from public worship. The glorification of power has broken more hearts than it has healed. (p. 55)
And another passage on the notion of a completely “transcendent” God, which Whitehead refers to as the “Semitic” concept of God:
The main difficulties which the Semitic concept has to struggle with are two in number. One of them is that it leaves God completely outside metaphysical rationalization. We know, according to it, that He is such a being as to design and create this universe, and there our knowledge stops. If we mean by his goodness that He is the one self-existent, complete entity, then He is good. But such goodness must not be confused with the ordinary goodness of daily life. He is undeniably useful, because anything baffling can be ascribed to his direct decree.
The second difficulty of the concept is to get itself proved. The only possible proof would appear to be the “ontological proof” devised by Anselm, and revived by Descartes. According to this proof, the mere concept of such an entity allows us to infer its existence. Most philosophers and theologians reject this proof…. (pp. 70-71)
Interestingly, Whitehead argues that Christianity has modified the pure “Semitic” concept of God by introducing a degree of genuine immanence in the doctrines of the incarnation and the Trinity. The logos is a principle of God’s immanent presence in the world. “The Semitic God is omniscient; but, in addition to that, the Christian God is a factor in the universe” (p. 73).
However, he says, the transcendent, omnipotent God gradually became Christian orthodoxy, albeit modified by “tri-personality.” He suggests that a more thorough rethinking of the concept of God is necessary, one that’s consistent with our best science and our best metaphysics.
I think we see Whitehead struggling here to find a conception of God that is both intelligible and moral. (I read something suggesting that Whitehead’s loss of his son in World War I was one cause of his struggle with notions of omnipotence.) A God of absolute power and inscrutable will no longer makes sense to him.
As it happens, Marvin recently posted on Gordon Kaufman’s revisionist theological project, which takes a subtly different course from Whitehead’s. Kaufman argues against a personal, creator God, on the grounds that it doesn’t seem to fit with a scientific understanding of the nature of the universe or our experience of evil. By contrast, theologians working in the Whiteheadian tradition have picked up on the latter’s critique of omnipotence and transcendence (criticisms echoed by the other most important “process” philosopher, Charles Hartshorne) and developed it into an influential school of Christian theology.
It seems that Kaufman leans toward a more impersonal “ground-of-being” type of theism that is willing to jettison God’s personal and moral character, while process theologians sacrifice omnipotence and transcendence to uphold God’s nature as “creative-responsive love” (to use John Cobb and David Griffin’s term from their introduction to process theology). Granted, more traditionally minded theologians have tried to preserve God’s transcendence, omnipotence, and personal-moral nature, but they have a harder time dealing with the problem of evil. Maybe the best conclusion we can come to is that these are all avenues worth exploring, since it’s far from clear which is right–if any.
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Whitehead on the task of theology
In his book Adventures of Ideas, Alfred North Whitehead criticizes “liberal clergy and laymen” of the 18th and 19th centuries for rejecting systematic theology. The problem with the old theology wasn’t its intellectual or systematic character, Whitehead says, but its insistence on “dogmatic finality.” Metaphysics–or systematic, rational thought about the universe rooted in our deepest intuitions–is necessary to keep religion from veering off into emotionalism and superstition.
The task of Theology is to show how the World is founded on something beyond mere transient fact, and how it issues in something beyond the perishing of occasions. The temporal World is the stage of finite accomplishment. We ask of Theology to express that element in perishing lives which is undying by reason of its expression of perfections proper to our finite natures. In this way we shall understand how life includes a mode of satisfaction deeper than joy or sorrow. (p. 221)
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Progress in religion
The progress of religion is defined by the denunciation of gods. The keynote of idolatry is contentment with the prevalent gods.
– Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
A Thinking Reed 