A couple weeks ago, Professor Saray Ayala-López wrote a post entitled The ethics of talking about the ethics of eating, to which I offered a somewhat tangential comment about the ethics of eating meat. So as not to take away from the main point there, I decided to develop this issue separately here. I’ll include some of our dialogue there to begin the discussion.
Here are a few different views on eating meat:
- Veganism: no use of animal products
- Vegetarianism: no eating of meat, but use of some animal products
- Conscientious omnivorism: conscientious and selective eating of meat and use of animal products
Here's my initial defense of conscientious omnivorism.
“…I apply a standard of justice that relies on a baseline on nonhuman animals in their natural habitats or species-appropriate environments. A violation of justice occurs when we intentionally do something that places nonhuman animals below the baseline. I also do not assume that death is itself a bad thing; there can be good and bad deaths….[M]y standard of justice is violated:
(1) when we consume more meat than necessary or healthy;
(2) when we engage in practices that involve additional pain and suffering beyond what an animal would experience in its natural habitat, or
(3) when we contribute to conditions that:
- (a) create dependency (e.g., captivity) [and] invoke additional duties (of care, including with respect to (2) above) and;
- (b) we violate these additional duties.
My view is motivated by the practices of some indigenous peoples, who also ate meat (and engaged in other practices involving nonhuman animals) in a way that avoided (1), (2), and (3). If a Native American hunted and killed a buffalo to feed his family, was this morally wrong? If a grizzly bear seeking food attacked and killed me, would that be this morally wrong? What makes these acts *morally* wrong depends on an intentional violation of some standard of evaluation.”
Saray noted:
“...Some people would respond to you that if you can afford avoiding inflicting the pain, objectification, and/or death involved in meat eating, then you have good reasons to stop eating meat….”
Here, I want to address the objections to eating meat on the grounds that it causes pain, death, and objectification.
As a deontologist, I don’t think the consequences alone are morally relevant. Pain and death in and of themselves are neither good nor bad (e.g., pain of a medical intervention that is necessary for health or death of a soldier who sacrifices his life to save his troop). What makes the infliction of pain or death morally wrong, as mentioned in my initial defense, is when a person causes pain beyond what nonhuman animals would experience in their natural habitat.
Objectification, unlike pain and death, is not morally neutral. A deontologist may believe some principle P that a person ought to treat another consistently with the other’s species-specific capabilities. Objectification may be defined as a violation of P or, specifically, a violation of P in which a person treats another as less than appropriate given the other’s species-specific capabilities. If I step on a cockroach, I am not objectifying the cockroach because I am not treating it as less than appropriate given the cockroach’s species-specific capabilities. If I use a chimpanzee as a test dummy for testing vehicles (which involves isolation, captivity, and other physical and psychological harms), then I am treating another as less than appropriate given the other’s species-specific capabilities.
One can argue that objectification does not occur when we kill animals for food. Consider a world where there are extreme and isolated conditions (e.g., base camp of Mount Everest) and a small population of advanced intelligent animals, A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, etc. After the A's deplete all their other natural resources, they turn to each other for food. They start with the sick, weak, and elderly among them and, because their rate of consumption exceeds their rate of reproduction, the population eventually dies. If A1 hunted and killed A100, who was elderly, we may say that A1 objectified the elderly. But what about when A1 hunted and killed her equal, A2? A1 did what was necessary for her survival. Setting aside other possible moral offenses, she did not treat A2 as less than appropriate given A2’s species-specific capabilities. Indeed, A1 may have had to devise inventive traps knowing that A2 was her equal in intelligence and the typical traps used on the sick and elderly were useless. She also may have had to ensure a quick kill, not wanting A2 to experience any unnecessary physical or psychological harm.
An objector may might say "Well, this may be fine for your imaginary world of scarcity, but that’s not our world. Today we have sufficient plant-based sources of protein as well as new and improved synthetic sources of meat."
Here are two responses:
First, when the synthetic sources of meat become as accessible as (and qualitatively similar to) real meat, I think there is good reason to transition to these synthetic sources (over a long period of time, given our evolutionary preference for meat).
Second, whether we are primitive and small in number or advanced and 7.6 billion in number, the killing of another for food does not necessarily involve objectification. It can be viewed as involving a kind of competition: a survival of the fittest. When one competitor defeats another, the intent is not to objectify (i.e., treat the other as less than appropriate given the other’s species-specific capabilities), but to win the contest for survival. In the same way that A1 does not objectify A2, humans do not necessarily objectify other intelligent animals. While spears and open plains have been replaced with large-scale farms and ranches, what is morally wrong is not that animals are killed for food, but that we have cut corners to save money rather than doing what is right and, as a result, have placed animals in conditions that are inadequate given their species-specific capabilities.
Chong Choe-Smith
Department of Philosophy
Sacramento State
Chong, thanks for this provocative piece. I'm not completely sure what you mean by this, i.e., whether it is a sincere expression of your views which happens to be provocative, or if you are exaggerating for effect. So the following question may be a bit tone deaf: You self-identify as a deontologist, but I don't know how you derive your moral rules. I specifically don't know what sort of deontology results in the rule that the morally permissible level of pain to inflict on an animal is that which would typically occur in its natural habitat. I doubt that you subscribe to the general rule that if it occurs in nature, it is morally permissible.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the opportunity to clarify, Randy. My post is primarily responding to objections, rather than offering a fully developed theory on animals. My point is that what counts as a wrong for a consequentialist may not count as a wrong for a deontologist. When we call something unjust or wrong, we have to identify some standard of evaluation that is offended by the act in question. My standard of justice here does assume a baseline for animals of species-specific capabilities and species-appropriate environments (natural habitats). So this is added to (identifying what is appropriate) and not derived from some general standard of justice (giving to each what is due or treating each as appropriate). I would add that this assumption seems reasonable to me; what’s the alternative (wolves lying down with lambs—which may be impossible, at least in this world)?
ReplyDeleteI don't think this commits me to the view that everything that occurs in nature is morally permissible. Animals in their species-appropriate environments provides only a reasonable baseline or content for what is appropriate.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting argument, but I think our moral obligations go beyond (1), (2), and (3). For example, elephants are subject to horrible pain in their natural environment, sometimes getting eaten alive for hours by a pride of lions. I reckon it would not be acceptable for the members of a tribe of humans to do the same and eat the elephant alive until it dies after several hours of agony, despite the fact that lions would inflict such agony as well, even if the humans don't eat more than is healthy (or necessary? Those are two very different things). In short, it seems to me that the action of the tribe members would be immoral even if it does not violate (1), (2), or (3).
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi, Angra, thanks for your comment.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and Randy that what happens in the wild is morally problematic (I wonder if you consider the lions’ action morally wrong and, if so, why or why not). Condition (2) was not to suggest that everything that happens in the wild is morally permissible.
But I’m reluctant to revise condition (2) to read:
When we engage in practices that involve additional pain and suffering beyond what an animal should experience in its natural habitat.
This raises the additional problem of determining what “should” animals experience in the wild. If we could tame the wild, it would no longer be wild (and that too may be undesirable).
What I meant is something more like “what an animal would experience [under normal conditions] in its natural habitat.” Lions, under normal conditions, prey on smaller animals or animals similar to it in size and only on elephants when food is scarce.
When animals, because of injury or some other circumstance, are taken from the wild, their caretakers try to simulate the animals’ natural habitat, which may include nursing up to a certain age, similar food, similar objects or structures for play, sufficient space, etc. These conditions of an animal’s natural habitat are what I was referring to in condition (2). When we engage in practices (and here I mean something robust like Alasdair MacIntire’s conception of practice) that by their design involve depriving an animal of such conditions, then this is one way in which we are unjust to them.
I should also clarify that justice is not the only game in town, when we’re speaking of morality. So, yes, there may be other ways in which we are immoral to animals (e.g., depriving them of beneficence or care).
Chong, thanks for the reply.
DeleteI don't think the lions' actions are morally wrong. I don't think that lions are moral agents (i.e., the kind of things that have moral obligations). Whether an entity is a moral agent depends in my view on the sort of mind they have. Lions do not have the right sort of mind for that. As to what happens under normal conditions, I'm not sure. It seems to depend on where it happens. There are some prides of lions that specialize in elephants. They find them easy to catch because elephants are slow, and they seem to be incapable of actually hitting the lions. The killing process is slow and gruesome.
Still, if you think that that case is abnormal, we can consider alternative cases. For example, wolves regularly hunt and kill bison, elk, and other large prey animals. And they kill them slowly because they do not have the power to kill them quickly. But that's normal hunting. But it would not be acceptable for humans to kill them slowly, when weapons that can kill quickly are available: either both the slow and the quick kill are immoral (i.e., morally wrong), or the former is immoral and the latter is not.
Regarding the issue of injustice vs. other forms of immoral behavior, I'm not sure what you have in mind, but in any case, my disagreement is with the assessment that what makes the infliction of pain or death morally wrong is when a person causes pain beyond what nonhuman animals would experience in their natural habitat. I don't have a theory of what makes it morally wrong (I mean, not the specifics; it does depend on factors such as intentions, epistemic rationality and the information available to a person), so I assess the matter on a case by case basis, but it seems to me that inflicting pain not beyond what animals experience in their natural habitat is sometimes immoral, whereas inflicting pain beyond that threshold would not be immoral in some hypothetical (even if not realistic) scenarios.
I also should say that a band of humans slaughtering an elephant in the way that lions do would by itself be quite unusual. Humans, like other predators, may kill and eat animals for food, but their presence and intervention also may trigger additional responsibilities (as mentioned in condition (3)).
ReplyDeleteYour view, from what you shared, sounds Aristotelian: animals are not the kind of things that have moral obligations. Maybe, as with Kant, under your view, we do not have duties to animals, but we may have duties to each other regarding animals.
At this point, it may be helpful to add this. Some deontologists (e.g., Kant, Carl Cohen) have no problems objectifying animals because they think of animals as objects (or at least not moral persons). Kant believed that humans, as rational agents and therefore members of a moral community, have no duties to nonhuman animals, which were perceived as nonrational and therefore as mere things. According to Kant, we should treat humanity as an end and never merely as a means. But the categorical imperative does not apply to animals. Under his and similar views, there is no such thing as being unjust to animals.
I don’t agree with Kant on animals (and on his emphasis on rationality over other capabilities) because I think he was mistaken about the facts. Our knowledge concerning nonhuman animals is far more advanced now than Kant’s 18th century understanding of them (or Aristotle’s 4th century understanding). We know a lot more about the intellectual, psychological, emotional, and social capacities of animals (as well as a lot more about the intellectual, psychological, emotional, and social capacities of humans—and surprisingly there’s not always clear and morally significant differences).
So I don’t think that we should prejudge the matter by restricting the scope of those to whom we owe duties (i.e., moral status or the scope of our moral community). I think we should apply the principles impartially (let them draw their own distinctions and judgments).
Here, in applying the principle P against objectification (mentioned in my post), the cannibalism thought experiment suggest that killing another for food may not involve objectification.
I don't think my view is Aristotelian. I would agree with Aristotelianism on some issues, and disagree on others. I admit I don't have a full theory. I make assessments on a case by case basis (using my conscience, sense of right and wrong, or whatever one prefers to call that), and sometimes, that allows me to make partial generalizations, though in a rather limited fashion. Still, I can think of any situations in which lions do different things, but in none of them I make a judgment that the behavior is immoral. I do the same with other entities, and one of my partial generalizations is that depending on the sort of mind the entity has, it is or is not a moral agent. On the other hand, I do believe that we do have duties to other animals, since there are plenty of situations (i.e., hypothetical or real scenarios) in which I reckon the behavior of humans towards other animals is immoral, and I think "A has a duty to X" and "It would be immoral of A to fail to X" to be equivalent (necessarily at least; probably conceptually).
DeleteSo, in short, I think lions do not have moral duties at all. But we do have some moral duties towards lions. For example, we have - say - a duty not to inflict pain on them for pleasure. I don't think we have a duty to prevent their extinction, though, or even a duty not to act in ways that result in their extinction (except if that extinction has bad consequences for other people, or other nonhuman animals, etc., but a duty not to cause their extinction would be derivative - i.e., due to other consequences -, and it might exist only due to those consequences).
That aside, I'm not saying only humans have duties. Some of our ancestors may have had moral duties. I don't know. Maybe chimps do have moral duties, though maybe what they have is chimp-moral duties, which would be something similar to moral duties, but not quite the same. Those are difficult issues, and moreover, there is no clear line separating humans from nonhumans, or moral from nonmoral agents (but this, I think, is only an example of vagueness, which pervasive in our language). .
Maybe you are part Aristotelian and part sentimentalist or something. Either way, it is challenging to justify or explain one’s belief that humans have duties to animals, but (most) animals have no duties.
ReplyDeleteA case-by-case approach usually refers to an application of some general norm (particularly when the application depends heavily on the facts or circumstances), rather than identifying the right moral beliefs and values in the first place (which, then, suggests a kind of relativism (subjectivism)—a picking and choosing of what seems right to me).
Gary Francione says that we tend to be schizophrenic when it comes to animal ethics: we hold different sets of beliefs concerning animals that are incoherent with each other. My view, which is admittedly unusual and also not entirely worked out, is an attempt to arrive at greater coherence.
When we say that humans have duties, but nonhuman animals do not. This is a moral belief that requires justification. My approach is not to prejudge these matters (such starting assumptions are impossible to justify with any satisfaction) and simply apply the relevant questions or principles and consider the subject in question for what it is (considering its species-specific capabilities). For example, if we’re trying to determine whether, for a particular species, the young stay with their mothers and for how long, we can consider its typical behavior patterns. Chimpanzees nurse and stay with their mothers for years. From this, we may say that, based at least in part on the near universality of the need for young chimpanzees to stay with their mothers for healthy development, chimpanzee mothers have a duty to nurse their young. If a chimpanzee mother abandons her baby, we may judge that the mother did something wrong, even though our moral evaluation may be tempered by the mother’s prior experience, knowledge, and level of control. Why reserve rights and duties for those who have human-level knowledge and control (as if animals are dumb creatures that act purely out of instinct and conditioning and human action is entirely or primarily the result of control and not of instinct and conditioning)?
I don't think I'm part Aristotelian, because while I agree with Aristotelians on some issues, it's not because of a general theory that resembles Aristotelianism. I'm definitely not part sentimentalist. I suppose I could say I'm part intuitionist (on ethics), but on the epistemic part of intuitionism, not the metaphysical part. But even that does not give the right impression.
DeleteAs for justifying my belief that humans have moral duties to other animals, but other animals (nearly all of them, anyway) do not have moral duties to humans (I'm uncertain about chimps, bonobos and the like), I think I already have, but I can try with more detail:
Using my own sense of right and wrong (or conscience, or whatever one calls it), I make the assessment (which I find pretty clear) that it's morally wrong to torture any other animals just for pleasure, and then assert (which is also pretty clear to me) that that entails a moral duty not to torture other animals just for pleasure. So, that establishes the first part, i.e., we have moral duties to other animals*.
The part that remains is that other animals (except, perhaps, for chimps, bonobos, and maybe other primates with minds sufficiently similar to ours; I take no stance on whether they have moral duties) do not have moral duties towards us. But more generally, I would argue that they do not have moral duties - not just towards us. I make the assessment as follows: I contemplate instances of behavior of nonhuman animals - real or hypothetical - and in all cases, my sense of right and wrong does not make a negative moral judgment about the behavior of the animal. I don't intuitively blame them at all. So, by induction, I reckon their behavior is never possibly immoral, and it follows that they have no moral duties.
If someone were to claim that my clear intuitive assessments fail to justify my beliefs on the matter, I think the burden would be on them. But lacking specific evidence that my sense of right and wrong is unreliable on these matters, I think it's very, very likely correct, given that it's a generally reliable method of finding moral truth (if that weren't so, then I would very probably not have a reliable way of telling right from wrong at all, and not just on these matters).
As for your view, I actually tend to agree with you that conscientious omnivorism is very probably true. My disagreement is with (at least as I understand it) your theory about when it's permissible, because when I test it (against my sense of right and wrong), it sometimes yield false positives and false negatives.
* The only caveat that I think if we go deeper, all duties depend only on the mind of the agent who has them, and do not require that other agents exist (e.g., it would be immoral te behave in a way that is mentally equivalent as torturing other animals purely for pleasure from the perspective of the torturer, even if there are no other animals being tortured and the would-be torturer is trapped in a Holodeck). But that caveat applies to duties to other people as much as it applies to duties to other nonhuman animals.
Still, I think it's proper to speak more loosely in most conversations, and talk about duties towards others.
In re: chimpanzees. As I said, I don't know whether chimpanzee mothers have a moral duty to nurse their young. I have no clear intuition on the matter. But perhaps, other chimps do. If a chimp mother fails to rear their young, do other chimps regularly get angry with her and try to punish her?
DeleteIf the answer is "yes", that would suggest something like a chimp-moral duty to nurse their young; there is the further question of whether chimp-moral duties are moral duties.
If the answer is "no", that suggests there is not a chimp-moral or for that matter a moral duty.
I don't know what the answer is.
I do know that lionesses also nurse their cubs for a shorter time, but still considerably long, definitely over a year. But if a lioness fails to do that, there is no retributive behavior on the part of other lionesses (or male lions, or anything). I have also my own sense of right and wrong, which yields an easy "not guilty" verdict. So, all of the evidence - my own intuitions and my assessment of the other lions - points to there not being a moral duty, or even a lion-moral duty (if there is such a thing as lion morality) to nurse their young.
On the other hand, monkeys and apes do seem to have something at least similar to morality, even if simpler. So, for example, chimps do have chimp-moral duties. I just don't know whether chimp-moral duties are moral duties; I think it depends on facts such as whether psychologically, chimps are close enough to us to have a grasp of chimp-good and chimp-bad things that at least do not diverge from what we call good and bad things (even if their concepts are much less precise), etc.; so, it's hard to tell. I just don't know whether chimp mothers have a chimp-moral or a moral duty to nurse their young. They do have a chimp-moral duty not to, say, steal the young of other chimps - and, as I mention, I take no stance on whether chimp-moral is the same as moral.
Angra, I did not mean to ask you to defend your view; I got it (from your intuitions you derive a subjective belief that animal behavior is never possibly moral). I don’t agree with you, but I got it.
DeleteIt is interesting that your concept of duties is private and yet your concept of moral responsibility for failing one’s duty requires retributivist attitudes by others. While I agree that we can have duties to ourselves, I think many, if not most, duties are directed duties to another (and, even the former can be understood as a duty I have to myself).
C has a duty to X to φ.
C is a duty-bearer, X is the duty-recipient, and φ is the content of the duty.
Kant belied that animals are not rational (autonomous) and therefore can neither be duty-bearers nor duty-recipients. (But I think his view is consistent with animals as the beneficiaries of human duties: C has a duty to X to φ for the benefit of Y (e.g., φ = feeding Y).)
In any event, your discussion about chimpanzees seems to require some retributivist attitude in response to a dereliction of duty. But if a duty depends only on the mind of the agent and does not require that other agents exist, it is not quite clear why someone’s response matters. You don’t have to respond to this—just something that I’m puzzled about.
The substance of your comments provide an occasion to make two more related points (for everyone):
1. Animal rights activists/philosophers (e.g., Tom Regan, Gary Francione) have noted that, if we assign lesser moral status to animals (e.g., “chimp moral duties” or “chimp good and bad,” if construed as less than human good and bad), the net effect is that, when there is a conflict between human interests and animal interests, animals interests always lose out. For example, if you assign humans a moral score of 10 and animals a moral score of 5 (being generous), humans win every time. This lesser moral status is the functional equivalent of no moral status (assigning animals a moral score of 0).
2. One way that we assign animals a lesser moral status is by requiring the humane treatment of animals. Every state has criminal laws against the cruel treatment of animals (which would prohibit the torturing of animals for pleasure). The problem is that, given point (1), exceptions are made for many different industries that use animals (e.g., agriculture, scientific experimentation, entertainment, etc.) So you can’t torture animals, except when you’re using them for these purposes. The Animal Welfare Act on the use of animals for experimentation, for example, does not prohibit the use of animals, but only provides for the care and treatment of animals that are used. The statute does not even include the animals (mice, birds, etc.) most commonly used in these minimal protections (but the federal regulations do). According to the statute, a mouse is not included in the definition “animal.” Our laws are incoherent and this may be a reflection of our incoherent views on animals.
My approach attempts to avoid these moral hazards of assuming animals have lesser moral status and argues that, even if they have equal moral status, the hunting and killing of animals may not offend at least certain principles of justice. (Another example that comes to mind, maybe the best example, is the example of killing in war.)
Chong,
DeleteSorry I misinterpreted, but I don't know what you mean by "subjective belief". It surely sounds like it's not good enough!
I actually think the method I'm using to make that assessment is proper. In fact, intuitive moral assessments using one's own conscience (or sense of right and wrong, or whatever one calls it) seems to be the primary means of making moral assessments. On that note, if someone proposes a moral theory, barring inconsistencies, the primary way of testing that theory seems to be to check whether it passes the test against intuitions in different scenarios (real or counterfactual), especially those in which one has clear intuitions.
Granted, there are other pieces of evidence (such as the intuitions of others) that might undermine the confidence one should assign to one's moral intuitions, but I think one can still make generally good assessments, and in case of disagreement, try to figure out whether there are likely causes of error in either one's own intuitions or those of the people who disagree with one's assessment. At any rate, there seems to be no other proper way to proceed. Going by a theory without first testing it would not be epistemically proper - and, for that matter, one would have no way of picking between different theories.
I don't know what you mean when you say that my concept of duty is private; if you're talking about the person in the Holodeck, etc., yes, in that sense it's private. But my concept of moral responsibility for failing one's duty does not require retributivist attitudes by others. Failing one's moral duty is - or just behaving immorally - is the central concept. I don't know what "moral responsibility" is beyond that. It seems to me like a derived and somewhat more ambiguous concept (though I know much of present-day moral philosophy focuses on it; I don't think that's the best approach). But at any rate, I do not require any sort of sentiments on the part of others. Rather, in the case of the chimpanzee, the existence (or not) of said sentiments would be evidence supporting that there is a (chimp-)moral violation, because if there is chimp-morality (which may or may not be the same as morality), chimps very probably do have a sense that allows them to pick violations from other chimps; our own sense might work too, but I don't have clear intuitions on the matter.
However, that's not a requirement.
For example, suppose that a group of people - following some religious text they firmly believe in - stone two men to death for having same-sex sex. Their behavior was morally appalling, even if there is no one with retributive sentiments towards them. Historically, it may well be that there was no such sentiment on many ocassions; the victims may well have been to scared to think about retribution and/or they felt guilty because they too believed that their behavior was immoral. No other people knew about it. But I reckon they behaved in a morally appalling manner - I reckon that, but I have no punitive sentiment towards the dead.
As to whether I think duties are towards oneself, or towards others, I think they're not towards oneself, but they do not require others, either. If they have to be directed towards someone or something, I would say a better approximation is that they're directed towards what one take or should rationally take to be others, even if those others don't exist or don't have the properties one believes or should rationally believe they have.
But perhaps (this is tentative, though) a better approximation is that "A has a duty to X" is another way of saying "A behaves immorally if A fails to X", and that's a more basic concept - i.e., immoral and non-immoral behavior, or maybe a mind acting immorally and a mind not acting immorally.
The "C is a duty-bearer, X is the duty-recipient, and φ is the content of the duty." seems to me like a good approximation most of the time, but it seems to be an approximation that gives the right result in real life cases, not what's actually going on. I could give two reasons:
Deletea. The duty remains if X ceases to exist, as long as C has no information about that. For example, let's say that Bob promises his mother Mary that he's going to be at her place at noon, to take her to the doctor. If he fails to do so because he prefers to, say, go out with his girlfriend. His behavior is equally immoral regardless of whether, say, Mary died at 11 AM (if you like, we can consider two different possible worlds, one in which Mary is alive at noon, one in which she's dead, and Bob's behavior is morally just as bad in both).
b. The duty exists even if there has never been a recipient, if the duty-bearer properly believes there is (e.g., Holodeck scenarios), or should rationally believe there is, and probably in some other cases.
Still, in most circumstances, talking about duties towards others is a sufficiently good approximation, so I'm going to continue to do so as long as you do, just with the caveat that I think it's an approximation.
In re: chimps. You say: "In any event, your discussion about chimpanzees seems to require some retributivist attitude in response to a dereliction of duty. But if a duty depends only on the mind of the agent and does not require that other agents exist, it is not quite clear why someone's response matters. You don't have to respond to this—just something that I'm puzzled about".
I'd like to respond. My take on this is (briefly):
I reckon chimps probably do have a generally reliable chimp-moral sense, and they're generally good at figuring out that a chimp has behaved in a chimp-immoral way. This is just a case of my generally reckon that evolved faculties are generally reliable.
Now, my moral sense might be of some use in the case of chimp-morality, because there are some similarities, but I reckon that generally, the chimp-moral sense that chimps have is more reliable at ascertaining chimp-moral obligations than mine is. At any rate, my moral sense yields no clear verdict on the matter, so I would take the assessment of other chimps as evidence.
An analogy: Imagine some advanced aliens evolved on another planet (let's call them 2-squid, as they evolved from something like squid). After making contact, among other things we discover they have some talk in their language akin to our color talk, but which is associated with other wavelengths (i.e., not matching ours). If I wanted to see whether some object is 2-squid-red (i.e., if it has the property 2-squid-redness, which is a 2-squid-color property), I would proceed by testing whether 2-squids (let's say their civilization is unified and has a single language) reckon it is 2-red, when using their own visual system under ordinary conditions. I don't have 2-squid-color vision, so my visual system would be of no use (in the chimp case, my moral sense can be of some use, but I reckon quite limited).
In re: your two general points, here's my take on it: "1. Animal rights activists/philosophers (eg, Tom Regan, Gary Francione) have noted that, if we assign lesser moral status to animals (eg, “chimp moral duties” or “chimp good and bad,” if construed as less than human good and bad), the net effect is that, when there is a conflict between human interests and animal interests, animals interests always lose out. For example, if you assign humans a moral score of 10 and animals a moral score of 5 (being generous), humans win every time. This lesser moral status is the functional equivalent of no moral status (assigning animals a moral score of 0). "
DeleteI mentioned that I don't know whether chimp-morality is the same as morality. But at any rate, we can consider, say, the hypothetical advanced 2-squid. I do think that moral goodness and moral badness are very probably morally more important than 2-squid-moral goodness and 2-squid-moral badness, just as I think 2-squid-moral goodness and 2-squid-moral are probably 2-squid-morally more important than moral goodness and moral badness. But that in no way says that this is the functional equivalent of assigning 2-squids (or chimps), a moral score of 0. It does not follow in any way.
Back to chimps, there may be a conflict between human interest and chimp interest: a chimp does not want to be put in a small cage, poked, forced to smoke, etc., for the entertainment of humans. And I think it would be immoral on the part of humans to treat chimps like that. So, in case of conflict, the humans lose - I would support laws banning such behavior, and there is no contradiction in saying that humans behave immorally by inflicting suffering on chimps for fun.
"2. One way that we assign animals a lesser moral status is by requiring the humane treatment of animals. Every state has criminal laws against the cruel treatment of animals (which would prohibit the torturing of animals for pleasure). The problem is that, given point (1), exceptions are made for many different industries that use animals (eg, agriculture, scientific experimentation, entertainment, etc.) So you can't torture animals, except when you're using them for these purposes. The Animal Welfare Act on the use of animals for experimentation, for example, does not prohibit the use of animals, but only provides for the care and treatment of animals that are used. The statute does not even include the animals (mice, birds, etc.) most commonly used in these minimal protections (but the federal regulations do). According to the statute, a mouse is not included in the definition “animal.” Our laws are incoherent and this may be a reflection of our incoherent views on animals."
The laws may well be incoherent. I'm no legal expert. But that does not follow from saying that some behaviors towards nonhuman animals are immoral, whereas others aren't. In fact, I would say that a similar assessment can be made about behaviors towards humans.
As for the law, sometimes (at least in many places), it's legal to use humans for experimentation. For example, there are psychology experiments in which the participants are not actually told the purpose of the experiment, or that it's an experiment at all (purely for example: https://areomagazine.com/2017/06/30/would-you-agree-to-sex-with-a-total-stranger/).
So, experimenting on humans is sometimes allowed, and sometimes not allowed. It's just that the situations in which it's not allowed are many more than in the case of experiments on chimps (usually!). And in many countries at least, experiments on chimps are a lot more restricted than, say, experiments on flies. And so on. I don't think this needs to be in any way incoherent, though of course it may well be that in some cases, laws happen to be incoherent.
Angra, thank you for your comments, but, unfortunately, I do not have time to respond to them. If you’re interested, I would suggest the following books or articles:
Delete1. Pojman, “The Case Against Moral Relativism” (raising problems with a person relying on their own subjective sense of right and wrong; I mentioned your "subjective belief" because of these and similar comments: "Using my own sense of right and wrong..., I make the assessment...that it's morally wrong to torture any other animals just for pleasure, and then [I] assert...that that entails a moral duty not to torture other animals just for pleasure"--this suggests that you are asserting a subjective moral belief based on your experience);
2. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Hume is a sentimentalist (morality is derived from the senses or sentiments, as opposed to reason) and, though you do not think of yourself as a sentimentalist, your comments suggest otherwise (and Hume offers a way to ground sentimentalism in a universal moral sense that may be helpful to avoid subjectivism);
3. On rights and duties, generally: Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Concepts; and maybe Rowan Cruft, “An Introduction on the Symposium of Rights and the Direction of Duties”;
4. More on animals: Beauchamp and Frye, Oxford Handbook on Animal Ethics; Sunstein and Nussbaum, Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions; and maybe something by Andrew Rowan (Andrew often spoke of the advanced capabilities of animals, e.g., experiencing suffering and other psychological states).
You raise many other subjects, but I would like to keep the focus of this discussion on the ethics of eating animals.
Chong,
DeleteFair enough, then thanks for the suggestions. I'll leave it at that in a moment, but I'd like to clarify a couple of points about my position:
1. I haven't read Pojman's book, but I looked it up after your suggestion, and what he argues against is something I would readily say is false, and not at all similar to my view. I don't know whether I would agree with his particular arguments, but I've read enough arguments against relativism to be persuaded. So, I'm not a moral relativist, in the usual sense of the term. I guess in a sense I might be called a "species-relativist", but that's not the target of Pojman's argument.
2. I'm reasonably familiar with Hume's views, as explained in the Enquiry. I disagree with his views. Perhaps, you interpret Hume differently from the way I do, but I think there are numerous problems with his argumentation.
Other than that, I disagree with the use of "subjective belief" in this context, for the reasons I explained earlier, but I'll leave it at that.
Hi Chong.
ReplyDeleteI’m sympathetic to your “conscientious omnivore” approach. I would describe myself as a conscientious omnivore. But I have been reviewing my position recently- and so some of what I write here I write in self-reflection.
You say:
"One can argue that objectification does not occur when we kill animals for food." You seem then to give a case in which advanced intelligent animals- I’m hoping humans would qualify- kill each other for food. If I understand you correctly, A1’s killing A2 for food does not represent a morally inappropriate objectification so long as A1 is acting in the interest of her own survival, and she does not treat A2 as less than appropriate given A2’s species-specific capabilities. Again, if I understand you, you suggest that devising intelligent traps- thereby acknowledging A2’s intelligence- supports the claim that A1 is treating A2 appropriately in light of her species-specific capabilities.
First: Some animals are very difficult to hunt, or to fish. (As a fly-fisherman I speak from experience.) The science that is employed does not necessarily acknowledge the intelligence of the prey. Trout can be very hard to catch, but are not very smart, as far as I can determine. But given the difficulty I have in catching them, maybe I am just refusing to acknowledge that they are actually smarter than I am.
Secondly: I understand why you do not wish to develop a full-blown deontological theory in the space of 1,000 words, but I am searching for some notion of objectification according to which an entity is not objectified when its value is reduced to that of food. The issue, it seems to me, is not whether the prey in this case is objectified, but with whether the circumstances (e.g. the survival of the diner) warrant that reduction in status on the part of the entity who is dined upon. Too, it seems to me that the survival of the diner is only significant when we are considering whether the means (A1’s killing of A2) justify the end (A1’s survival). I know how a consequentialist argument might proceed here, but I’m having trouble seeing a deontological one.
Most, and perhaps all, of the animals we eat have species-specific capabilities that far outstrip their ability to serve as a tasty meal.
Finally, you seem to suggest that when we have synthetic meats that are qualitatively similar to the real thing, we would have good reason to transition to the synthetic versions. But this seems to make things like the appearance, taste, and texture of the alternatives relevant to the question of whether we are justified in turning animals into food. But- particularly on a deontological account- how can considerations of the taste and texture of alternatives have any bearing on whether we make objects of animals by eating them? --i.e. so long as we have no tasty alternatives, we do not objectify cattle by turning them into hamburgers?
David, I was hoping for a comment on objectification. I expected some push back against my claim that eating animals do not necessarily involve their objectification. You’ve expressed some of my own worries about the claim.
DeleteOn the intelligence of trout, some animal rights activists are speaking more about animals that are commonly used for human purposes—such as mice and fish—because it is convenient to assume that these animals are less capable. I think it is safer to assume that humans have failed to design the right experiments to test these animals, rather than that the animals lack morally relevant capabilities. I realize that much of what I say makes my claim harder to defend. Our tools for capturing animals may reflect a number of things, not just the animals’ intelligence, speed, or other traits.
On your second point, when A1 hunts and kills A2 for food, is he not treating A2 as a source of food? My explanation is that this involves competition for survival rather than objectification. It may be the case that the two fight to the death and then one of them survives and wins the spoils, the other’s body.
Here’s another example. Let’s say that B1 has a child B1a. She finds herself in a situation in which the survival of her child depends on the death of another person B2 (imagine the cliff scene from the 1993 movie, The Good Son, but Elijah Wood is B1a and Maccauley Culkin is an unrelated B2). So B1 sacrifices B2 to save her child (she has to let go of B2 in order to hold on to B1a). While it is true that B1 treated B2 as a way to rescue her child, she did not treat B2 merely as a means. The decision to let go may have involved mental anguish, a consideration of B2’s humanity, but, in the end, desperation. If B2 was a mere object, B1 would have had no reason to hesitate before letting go of B2.
From the examples, we can see that there’s something different between A2 and B2 and mere objects. Objectification can be construed as involving the treatment of another as less than appropriate given the other’s species-specific capabilities. Eating animals may involve objectification in typical cases, but my point is that it does not have to or does not always. The origins of the human consumption of other large mammals may have been more about survival than objectification.
The point about synthetic meat being qualitatively similar was a side point—which has to do with being able to change evolutionary preferences over time. The examples involve a competition for survival, so, if survival is not an issue, then there is good reason to transition to these other sources of protein. This transition may just take a million years or so.
Hi Chong. Thanks for your very interesting response.
ReplyDeleteJust a quick remark. Indeed the fight between A1 and A2 could be seen as a contest for survival; I had not seen that angle. But in that case, wouldn't that just provide us with an argument that this is a justified case of objectification?
It's clear that you and I have been thinking about some of the same things. I also think the Native American model is a good one for a conscientious omnivorism. But my approach is Aristotelian.
My hunch- I have no ready argument for this- is that a deontological approach will either license all eating of meat, at least assuming that this can be done without cruelty, or it will forbid it all, at least in any case where some minimal standards of animal agency are met.
I had a friend who would not eat any animals but oysters. That seems like a safe place to draw the line.
David, thanks for forcing me to delve into this a bit more deeply.
DeleteLet me draw on what is sometimes referred to as ordinary morality and a legal distinction to answer your question: is this not a justified case of objectification?
As a part of ordinary morality, there are certain defenses (justifications) for offenses involving death or injury to others and chief among these defenses are defense of self and defense of others. Just cause for war, for example, can be thought of as states asserting self-defense against an act of aggression.
Also, one legal distinction that I always find useful when referring to defenses is the distinction between something that is exculpatory and something that is mitigating. Exculpatory evidence, such as evidence of self-defense, is evidence that may show that a criminal defendant is not guilty of the offense. Mitigating evidence, such as a propensity for violence, is evidence that may show that, although the defendant is guilty (the law assumes a robust conception of freedom of the will), he deserves a lesser penalty.
Here, in speaking of the offense of violating P, in which P requires that we treat others consistently with their species-specific capabilities, if A1 was acting in self-defense (responding to a threat to his survival), then this exculpates him of the offense. It is not an instance of a violation of P, objectification.
If, however, A1 was acting out of extreme hunger or a strong preference for meat, this would not qualify as a defense under ordinary morality (again, assuming a robust conception of freedom of the will), but it may provide mitigating evidence for a lesser penalty. (When I wrote the original post, I had the historic case The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens (1884) about four shipwrecked men in mind. When one of the men fell ill, the defendants decided to kill him for food. When the case came before the Queen’s Bench, the court found moral necessity (the need for survival; no threat by another) insufficient as a defense of murder. The defendants were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, but their sentences were later commuted to six-months in prison.)
Not objectification in the first case, maybe excusable objectification in the second case. My original example (using traps) was more like the second case; the variation involving a true contest for survival was like the first case.
The origins of the human consumption of meat may have involved a true contest for survival, in which early humans may have acted in self-defense. If so, I don’t think we can find that these early humans violated P. Our practice of eating meat today may be based on an evolutionary preference for meat developed then, which may excuse, but not justify us.
I’m not sure about your all-or-nothing hunch about deontological approaches, but I’m generally very suspicious of all-or-nothing hunches (this will depend on how we conceptualize moral status (and I’m not entirely convinced by Regan and Francione on this) and the relevant principles).