A Thinking Reed

Category: Philosophy

  • Libertarianism re-visited

    William Bradford has a good write-up of Robert Nozick’s classic Anarchy, State & Utopia, which William just finished reading for the first time.

    I’ll admit that reading Nozick (and following it up with Hayek, von Mises, Rothbard, etc.) turned me into a libertarian for a while. But the problem with Nozick’s view, as nearly every critic has pointed out, is that he doesn’t attempt to justify his intuition that people have Lockean-style natural rights. He just assumes it. Others, like Rothbard, have attempted to justify it, though I think without success. What Rothbard is, perhaps, more successful at is arguing that if you accept natural rights, then you are logically committed to anarchism, since, contra Nozick, no state can exist that doesn’t violate someone’s rights, so defined.

    Now, I’m inclined to see Rothbard’s conclusion as a reductio ad absurdum of rights-based libertarianism. It just seems clear that the consequences of anarchism would be so terrible that there must be something wrong with the argument that gets you there. In this case, that would be the premise that there are libertarian-style natural rights.

    If, instead of confining yourself to a natural rights position, you begin with a more consequentialist starting point, the justification of the state is pretty straightforward: everyone (or nearly everyone) would be a lot better off with a government than without it. Particularly, one might add, those who are weak or dependent in some way. Even supposing that the system of competing “protection agencies” beloved of anarcho-libertarian speculation could actually work, does anyone really want to live in a society in which your entitlement to not being killed, enslaved, or otherwise exploited was dependent upon your ability to pay?

    This is where John Stuart Mill, incidentally, is better than some of his libertarian acolytes. Mill recognizes that the security provided by society is what later theorists would call a “positive” freedom rather than a sheerly “negative” one. Security of life, liberty, and property isn’t merely a matter of being “left alone,” but requires the state to take positive steps, devote resources, etc. And Mill is likewise clear that these basic rights ultimately have a consequentialist justification: a society that protects these basic rights is one that gives its citizens a better shot at flourishing.

    The consequentialist justification of basic rights seems stronger to me than most natural-rights-style views, which often lean heavily on appeals to intuition. But once the distinction between positive and negative freedom is undermined, it’s hard to see why the government’s duties must be limited to those of a libertarian “night-watchman” state. All rights are positive rights in a sense, so why can’t rights to welfare, or health care, or what have you can, potentially, be justified on similar consequentialist grounds?

  • Of wolf and man

    I “tweeted” recently that I head read and really enjoyed Mark Rowlands’ The Philosopher and the Wolf. Rowlands, the eponymous philosopher, has written a bunch of books, including an excellent introduction to animal rights.

    TPATW defies easy summary, but it’s part-memoir and part-philosophical rumination arising from Rowlands’ experience living with a companion wolf named Brenin over more than a decade. The wolf accompanied Rowlands everywhere, including to his philosophy lectures. Over time, Rowlands comes to see the wolf as embodying a particular way of being in the world that is, at least in some respects, superior to human being. In his telling, the duplicity and conniving nature of apes (i.e., us) compare unfavorably with directness and honesty of the wolf. Lest this all sound like excessively heavy going, Rowlands writes with a light touch (several of his books have been written at the popular level), and the narrative is enlivened with amusing and poignant stories about his life with Brenin. One of the best books I’ve read this year.

    Incidentally, here’s an in-depth interview with Rowlands from a while back, ranging over a number of philosophical and moral issues.

  • Vegetarianism without foundations

    Freddie at the group blog the League of Ordinary Gentleman probes the philosophical underpinnings of vegetarians/vegans and contends that they are insufficiently developed.

    I think he’s wrong in suggesting that vegetarians haven’t devled deeply into these issues: there’s quite a vast philosophical literature on the subject that has sprung up in the last 30 years, and there are accounts of why animals matter morally that are as good as any other philosophical theory in ethics. (Which doesn’t mean they’re problem free, of course.) But more to the point, I don’t think you need a fully developed philosophical view to find vegetarianism compelling.

    Almost everyone admits, in practice if not theory, that animals can suffer. And nearly everyone admits that it’s a moral truism that you shouldn’t cause unnecessary suffering. From those two simple, commonsense premises, it follows pretty quickly that you shouldn’t cause animals unnecessary suffering.

    Throw in a few basic factual premises about the conditions under which animals are raised for food, and I think you arrive in short order at the minimal conclusion that our current system for raising animals for food (and probably most other feasible systems) is morally objectionable to say the least.

    None of this requires you to make any major conceptual shifts in your worldview, such as accepting a particular theory of value or animal “rights” or whatnot, merely to draw a conclusion from premises that you (probably) already accept. It’s true that there are some people who claim to believe that animals don’t suffer, or that their suffering doesn’t matter. But the widespread revulsion at, say, the antics of Michael Vick indicate that this is a minority position.

    In this sense, vegetarianism is like a lot of other reform movements: it doesn’t offer new values so much as try to make explicit the implications of values that people already accept. Why would you treat a pig in ways you would never dream of treating your dog or cat? The obstacles to reform are probably more institutional, psychological, social, and practical impediments than logical ones.

    I’m, of course, all for investigating the question of whether animals have a right to life (as opposed to a right not to be made to suffer), but as far as the practical question goes, this makes almost no difference. Assuming there are idyllic farms where animals are allowed to roam freely and express their particular natures, do not have their tails docked or beaks clipped, are not castrated without anesthesia, and are killed suddenly and painlessly, these farms represent a tiny (if not nonexistent) percentage of meat production in industrial nations. For all practical purposes, avoiding the products of factory farms means being a near or total vegetarian.

  • “A severely conservative moral stance”

    James Rachels on vegetarianism:

    Vegetarianism is often regarded as an eccentric moral view, and it is assumed that a vegetarian must subscribe to principles at odds with common sense. But if this reasoning is sound, the opposite is true: the rule against causing unnecessary pain is the least eccentric of all moral principles, and that rule leads straight to the conclusion that we should abandon the business of meat production and adopt alternative diets. Considered in this light, vegetarianism might be thought of as a severely conservative moral stance. (Created from Animals, p. 212)

    Stephen R. L. Clark makes a similar point in his book The Moral Status of Animals: one needn’t adopt a radically revisionist moral stance to see that current methods of meat production impose vast amounts of unnecessary suffering. And “do not be the cause of avoidable suffering” is about the most platitudinous moral platitude around.

  • The cosmic prodigal son

    I’ve been reading a book called Created from Animals: the Moral Implications of Darwinism by the late philosopher James Rachels. The thesis is that Darwinism does have far-reaching implications for morality, even if not the ones commonly thought. This is in contrast to those, like Stephen Jay Gould, who tried to erect an insuperable wall between the realm of “values” and scientific fact.

    Rachels’ long opening chapter, in which he reviews Darwin’s life and the basic argument of the Origin of Species, is extremely clear and compelling, and worth the price of the book alone (well, at least in my case—I picked it up used for around five bucks). Subsequent chapters delve into the more properly philosophical argument about how Darwin’s findings might be related to ethics.

    What Rachels is trying to show is that Darwinism pulls the lynchpin of “human dignity” out of our existing moral framework by undermining crucial beliefs that support it. He agrees with many other philosophers that you can’t get an “ought” from an “is”—that is, statements of fact do not logically entail statements of value. But, he argues, our belief in human dignity—by which he means the view that human life is uniquely sacred or valuable—derives its support from certain beliefs about the world and our place in it. Chief among these are one religious belief and one secular philosophical belief: that human beings were specially created (in some sense) in God’s image and that human beings are uniquely rational.

    If, as Rachels believes is the case, Darwinism undermines the grounds for these beliefs, then the corresponding normative belief in human dignity will be undermined, even if it is still logically independent of those beliefs. In other words, we could still retain the belief in human dignity as a sheer judgment of value, but without the supporting beliefs (or some substitute), it’s not clear why we should.

    So why does Rachels think that Darwinism does in fact undermine these beliefs? For the purposes of this post, let’s focus on the imago dei doctrine. According to Rachels, the traditional view that human beings are created in the divine image means that “the world [was] intended to be [humanity’s] habitation, and everything else in it given for [our] enjoyment and use” (p. 86). The evolutionary picture of the world, Rachels contends, undermines this for several reasons. First, there have existed long stretches of time–billions of years, far and away the vast majority of time–where human beings did not exist and the universe got along just fine without us. Second, Darwinian evolution undermines the view that all things in nature have the form they do in order to serve some human purpose; instead, it sees the forms of creatures as an adaptation to their environment. Finally, the path of evolution doesn’t require us to posit a god to explain the emergence of human life; on strictly scientific grounds, we aren’t required to believe that the existence of human beings is anything other than a fortuitious (for us) outcome of a blind process.

    It’s possible, Rachels says, to say that God is the “first cause,” the one who sets up the basic laws of the universe, but whose further intervention isn’t required to explain the emergence and development of life. But even if this is accepted (and he’s not sure that it should be–why not just say that the universe is uncaused?), we’re a long way from the God of the Bible or Judeo-Christian tradition. Such a deistic god doesn’t possess nearly the same religious significance as a more traditional one. At that point, it’s not clear why we’d insist on hanging on the word “god” at all.

    Regular readers are probably not terribly surprised to learn that I have some sympathy with Rachels’ argument. Like much of the best atheist and agnostic thought, Rachels’ argument provides the opportuntiy for a purification of religious thought and for smashing a few idols. And surely one of the great idols of the Christian tradition has been precisely the view that creation was made just for us and all other creatures were given for our enjoyment and use. While there are certainly parts of the Bible that support such a view, modern biblical scholars have pointed out that a “humano-centric” interpretation of the Bible (as distinguished from a theo-centric one) is profoundly distorting.

    The Bible is clear in many passages that creation exists not for our sake, but for the creator’s sake. God creates all that is and calls it “good” (not “good for us”). After the flood in Genesis, God makes a covenant with all flesh, not just with humanity. The Psalms tell us repeatedly that creatures of land, air, and sea praise their creator in their own language, without the mediation of human beings. God’s admonition to Job is that the creator’s purposes encompass far more than parochial human interests. The apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon praises the mercy and love of the Lord: “you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned.” Jesus insists that our heavenly Father cares for the lillies of the field and the sparrows of the air. St. Paul contends that “all things” are reconciled in Christ and that the entire creation is groaning for liberation from bondage.

    Rachels isn’t wrong to see the anthropocentric interpretation as the dominant one in Christian history. This may have been encouraged by a secular philosophy that defined the imago primarily as reason and free will, thus emphasizing the distinction between human beings and other creatures. A more “functionalist” understanding of humanity’s role as caretakers or gardeners of the earth, by contrast, emphasizes our embededness in and responsibility to the rest of creation.

    If this alternate narrative is right, then the evolutionary story can be seen in a different perspective. Human beings are one among millions of species in whom God takes delight. The story of creation is more of an open-ended process than a static, once-and-for-all act, one that gives rise to a multiplicity of beings that reflect some facet of the divine goodness.

    And the creator has many purposes, or many stories to tell. The overarching story is that of God’s overflowing goodness in creating other beings, beings with whom God wishes to share God’s self. Within that story are sub-plots, like that of humanity. Instead of seeing humanity as the jewel of creation, maybe a truer story would be that we are the prodigal son of creation, the ones who go off and squander the riches left to us by our Father. But the Father is constantly calling us back, willing to mend the broken relationship between us so that we can be restored to our proper place in the household. This isn’t a measure of how great we are, but of how great God’s love is.

    I’m not claiming to have solved all the problems evolutionary thought poses for religion (far from it!), but in this case I think a better understanding of the natural world can actually point us to a deeper understanding of our faith. (I’ll likely have more to say about Rachels’ moral project in a later post.)

  • One more (at least) on pluralism

    Another thought occurred to me about John Hick’s pluralism hypothesis: that it risks introducing a moralistic distortion into religion. Since, for Hick, religion is primarily a practical rather than a cognitive enterprise (because the Real in itself eludes our cognitive abilities), the criteria by which he judges religion are primarily moral ones. Religions are vehicles for moving from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness, where that largely means being more compassionate, etc.

    But Christianity, at least, isn’t primarily about “being moral.” It’s primarily about a loving, personal God that longs to be in relationship with his creation. Because human sin disrupts that relationship, morality has a role, but it’s a subordinate one (and, in itself, insufficient for restoring the divine-human relationship). The primary story is that of God’s self-bestowal on creation–in creating all that is and calling it good, in the calling of the patriarchs, in the liberation of Israel, and in the conjoining of the divine and the creaturely in Jesus–not human efforts to be more moral.

    Because Hick has prescinded from the particulars of the Christian story, though, he is left with little choice but to make the subordinate theme of morality central to religion. He’s hardly alone in this, since many people seem to think that the purpose of religion is to make people “good.” But, from a Christian perspective at least, that is really to miss the point–which is the overflowing love and grace of God. Ironically, then, Hick’s position ends up being more human-centered than Reality-centered, since the focus is on our moral self-improvement instead of on God.

  • Further thoughts on pluralism

    Thinking a bit more about John Hick’s pluralism, spurred on by some of the excellent comments on the last post, it does seem that my original worry about Hick’s position could be stated in a stronger form.

    My question was whether it’s necessary to believe in a tradition in a non-pluralist way (i.e., to believe that my tradition gets it right about the divine, at least in essentials) in order for it to be “soteriologically efficacious.” For if I come to view my tradition as simply a culturally conditioned response to the divine, that may prevent me from fully immersing myself in it, or committing to it, in the way necessary to move from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness (to use Hick’s terms).

    But an even stronger form of the objection, it seems to me, is that, on the Hickian hypothesis, it’s not clear what justification I have for believing that my tradition is soteriologically efficacious in the first place. Since the Real is, ex hypothesi, unknowable in itself, what reason do I have to believe that my tradition constitutes a reliable guide for relating to it?

    The more traditional Christian view is that, while God remains incomprehensible, we can know certain truths about God (both through the use of natural reason and because God has revealed Godself to us). Because of this, we believe certain ways of relating to God are appropriate and others not. If we didn’t believe that such knowledge was possible, what grounds would we have for affirming the appropriateness of our (or any) traditition as a way of relating to the divine?

    This doesn’t, however, commit us to a strong form of exclusivism. For it’s possible to hold that God is known/revealed in other tradtions and also to recognize that there is no tradition-independent (or subject-independent) way of establishing the truth of a single tradition. My reasons for being a Christian, for example, depend in part on my social and cultural context, personal experiences, and evaluative judgments–which means that there is an irreducible element of personal commitment in adhering to a particular tradition. This doesn’t make it irrational, but should humble us a bit in making overly strong claims for our own tradition. It also, however, doesn’t require us to give up its truth claims.

  • Religious pluralism revisited

    One common criticism of the pluralistic view of religions–and one that I have found persuasive–is that it presupposes a “god’s eye” vantage point that seems to be ruled out by the theory itself. That is, asserting that all religions provide a partial perspective on the divine, seems to imply that the pluralist can discern clearly the Reality that the various religious traditions perceive only dimly.

    John Hick, who probably has as large a claim as anyone to putting religious pluralism on the agenda of (Anglo-American) philosophy of religion, has a response to this objection. The pluralist hypothesis, he says, is an inductive hypothesis, founded in part on the assumption that religious experience is not illusory:

    The advocate of the pluralist understanding cannot pretend to any such cosmic vision. How then does he profess to know that the situation is indeed as he depicts it? The answer is that he does not profess to know this, if by knowledge we mean infallible cognition. Nor indeed can anyone else claim to have knowledge, in this sense, of either the exclusivist or inclusivist picture. All of them are, strictly speaking, hypotheses. The pluralist hypothesis is arrived at inductively. One starts from the fact that many human beings experience life in relation to a limitlessly greater transcendent Reality–whether the direction of transcendence be beyond our present existence or within its hidden depths. […] Treating one’s own form of religious experience, then, as veridical–as an experience (however dim, like “seeing through a glass darkly”) of transcendent divine Reality–one then has to take account of the fact that there are other great streams of religious experience which take different forms, are shaped by different conceptualities, and embodied in different institutions, art forms, and life-styles. In other words, besides one’s own religion, sustained by its distinctive form of religious experience, there are also other religions, through each of which flows the life blood of a different form of religious experience. What account is one to give of this plurality? (Problems of Religious Pluralism, pp. 37-38)

    Assuming that religious experience is to some extent veridical, Hick asks, is it more reasonable to think that one (and only one) tradition has discerned the truth about the divine, or that all the major traditions contain some truthful perception of that Reality? Hick’s argument is that the pluralistic hypothesis is the most reasonable.

    Most mainline Christians (Protestant and Catholic) no longer take the hard-line exclusivist stance that Christianity is true and other religions simply false. They also generally affirm that adherents of other religions can find salvation (though there’s a variety of accounts about how that’s supposed to work). But mainline theology has generally moved in the direction of “inclusivism.” What Hick contends, though, is that inclusivism is a logically unstable half-way house between exclusivism and a more thorough-going pluralism. His argument hinges on his understanding of the nature of salvation.

    For Hick, salvation is the process whereby we move from being self-centered to “Reality-centered.” That is, we become less preoccupied with our selves and move toward a universal compassion. Religion, then, is a vehicle for attaining salvation/liberation. And since, as seems evident, no one religion has a monopoly on this form of liberation, it seems reasonable to conclude that all religions with such spiritual and moral fruits are rooted in some kind of authentic experience of ultimate Reality. And it further seems to follow that no one religion can, on these grounds at any rate, claim to be the one unsurpassable truth.

    Religions–with their complex systems of symbol, myth, metaphysics, ritual, devotional practices, ethical principles, art, and social organization–are culturally conditioned responses to an encounter with “the Real”–an encounter often mediated through charismatic leaders and founders. What accounts the differences among religions is the diversity among human beings: their cultures, their histories, and other factors that shape their response to ultimate Reality. The Real as it appears in forms of religion must be distinguished from the Real as it is in itself. Different religions may reflect different aspects of the Real, but, as far as we can observe their effects, it would be presumptuous to assert that one is superior to the rest.

    Hick to some extent offers a pragmatic criterion of religious truth. Various culturally conditioned manifestations of the Real are true and good to the extent that they enable their adherents to move from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness. “These many different perceptions of the Real, both theistic and non-theistic, can only establish themselves as authentic by their soteriological efficacy” (p. 44). This doesn’t mean that religions don’t make truth-claims, but that their ultimate claims–in this life at any rate–can only be evaluated by their efficacy in making salvation possible.

    I think this version of pluralism is stronger than it’s often given credit for, and Hick has responses to some of the most common objections. But one question that occurs to me is whether the “soteriological efficacy” of a particular religion depends, at least in part, on its being believed in a non-pluralistic fashion. In other words, many of the great saints of the Christian tradition seem to be those who believed most wholeheartedly in Christianity’s truth claims. By contrast, if I come to see Christianity as one among many culturally conditioned responses to the Real, might it not be harder for the Christian narrative, symbols, practices, etc. to form me in a way that makes salvation/liberation possible? Won’t I be tempted to hold them at arm’s length, having seen them as the product of human minds as much as the divine mind?

    Of course, Hick might well respond that this is simply the position that all moderately critical religious believers find themselves in. Anyone who has rejected the inerrancy of the Bible and the infallibility of church and tradition must reckon with the fact that, to some extent, their religion is man-made. It may be a response to a divine revelation, but that revelation is mediated through human language, symbols, and concepts. Wholehearted, uncritical belief just isn’t an option.

  • Recent nibbles from Philosophy Bites

    I’ve flagged the excellent philosophy interview series Philosophy Bites before, but here are some recent highlights:

    –Political philosopher G.A. Cohern (who died yesterday-R.I.P.) on egalitarianism

    –Ben Rogers on Pascal’s Pensées

    –Christian philosopher and priest Marilyn McCord Adams on evil

    –Paul Snowdon on persons and animals

  • WASM 6: Concluding thoughts

    (See previous posts: 1|2|3|4|5)

    So, what has Linzey accomplished here? What I think his argument does–at least–is shift the burden of proof. Most of us, if we’re being honest, believe that animals suffer and that their suffering matters morally, at least to some degree. Few non-sociopaths think that it’s a matter of sheer moral indifference to, say, run a puppy over with a lawnmower.

    However, even while we admit that animal suffering exists and that it matters morally, we tend to greatly discount it. They’re “just animals” after all. Those much-vaunted differences between us and them justify, even if unconsciously, our disregard for their suffering. This allows us to inflict suffering on them under what are, after all, pretty flimsy pretenses and not to feel too bad about it. What Linzey does, though, is offer reasons not to discount animal suffering, in fact to weigh it more heavily because of the differences we think are so important.

    I wonder, though, if the position Linzey has developed doesn’t still require balancing competing goods, even if the presumption is strongly against inflicting suffering on animals (or taking their lives). What sets this apart from utilitarianism at the end of the day?

    One answer is that, unlike utilitarianism, Linzey’s view doesn’t allow for aggregating goods to justify suffering: I can inflict suffering on another sentient to protect myself from immediate danger, but not to secure some small, less vital good for a larger number of other beings. This is similar to some rights-based views where rights can only be overridden when they clash with other rights. Linzey has shown that animals share with children many of the qualities that call forth greater moral solicitude. But I’m not sure he’s successfully rebutted the “speciesist” presumption that many readers will have. After all, one reason that children call for special moral concern–in addition to their weakness and innocence–is that they are members of the human species. Merely pointing out some of the similarities between animals and children isn’t sufficient to show that there aren’t other morally relevant differences that justify disparate treatment.

    It may be that making a conceptual shift toward respecting animals as ends-in-themselves really does require a thoroughly worked-out theory of rights like Tom Regan‘s (or like Linzey developed in his earlier work). This doesn’t imply that animals have all the same rights as human beings (the dread “moral equivalence”), but that they would have rights relevant to their own interests (not to be subjected to prolonged suffering, e.g.). Regan’s argument, for example, is that animals have rights because they are “subjects of a life,” beings with lives of their own and which, for that reason, shouldn’t be treated merely as means to our ends.

    One of the more valuable lessons from this book, though, is that it pushes us to reconsider the role of the “rational,” autonomous adult human being in our moral thinking. Linzey isn’t the first to do this, but the connections he draws between children and animals highlight themes of interdependence and vulnerability that too often get short shrift in Western moral thought. (Alasdair MacIntyre’s Dependent Rational Animals does something similar from a very different perspective.) The reasons animal suffering matters apply to more than just children: we are all, at some time or another, vulnerable and helpless. A moral theory–or a society–that doesn’t recognize this can hardly be considered adequate or just.