It's a Matter of Respect

I'm home from one trip and about to embark on another, so obviously I'm too busy for blogging--there's cleaning and packing to do, right?  Right, but that would be so boring....

Some long drives in the past week gave me time to think about animal welfare regulation just a little more.  In my past posts, I attempted to think about the ethics of welfare regulation "ad hominem" -- in the technical sense (see sense #2, here).  That is, starting from my opponent's premises.  My opponent draws a very sharp line between rights and welfare. Being raised as food violates a pig's rights, and then there is the separate question of the pig's welfare--how miserable or happy is the pig, hour to hour? My opponent is bothered by over-attention to welfare issues, because the rights violation is the underlying problem. 

Now, I think even with this sharp dichotomy, there's a good case for welfare regulations, as I initially argued here (before I saw the Francione-Friedrich debate), but that post was, as I say, "ad hominem" (in the technical sense!) -- I was going along with an approach to animal ethics that isn't actually my own, and thinking about where it leads (and doesn't lead).  But what about how these issues look from my own standpoint?

The primary thing we owe to animals (I argue, in my book Animalkind: What We Owe to Animals), is respect. Animals in extreme captivity are disrespected because they can't be themselves--pigs can't be pigs, fish can't be fish.  A calf who can't so much as turn around is treated not as an animal but as a meat machine (to use Ruth Harrison's excellent phrase).   We may need to supplement respect-talk with compassion-talk, but I think respect is primary.  And it's appropriate even when we are uncertain what an animal is feeling.  Do animals habituate to horrible environments and stop feeling or caring?  Even if they did, that wouldn't make those environments OK -- they're still disrespectful. 

Suppose a zoo gives the animals more space, or an animal farm releases a pig to a group pen or pasture.  On my view, this isn't a superficial change-- a change to mere welfare, as opposed to rights -- it's a change to what really matters.  It's more respectful.  The animal is now at least more able to exercise his or her natural capacities.  Now, very small changes aren't worth huge amounts of effort or money, so on this respect account, we can still debate how to focus animal advocacy.  But an increase in liberty is a meaningful change, not a surface change.

Now, imagine we gradually make life better for a pig. We respectfully increase the size of the pen, then we respectfully allow the pig out doors, and we respectfully allow herd behavior, etc.  We don't clip ears or dock tails, and so on.  Nevertheless, the day comes when the animal is slaughtered and turned into barbecue (aside: Dear Michael Pollan, I am not enjoying the description of a pig barbecue in part I of your new book Cooked).  How can any of the previous improvements be respectful if the last stage is so disrespectful?

You could try to make a case that killing animals doesn't harm them, but I think that's false (see Animalkind, p. 128-31).  No, it's clearly harmful and disrespectful to kill an animal for the pleasure of a good barbecue (even assuming this pleasure runs pretty deep -- and we should allow that it does).  But respect comes in degrees--you have done far more of what you should, if you allow an animal to exercise his or her natural capacities prior to death.  I don't think the purpose of the whole system (using animals for our benefit) annuls all the apparent progress.  And in any case, the whole system doesn't have to be completely brought down, in the name of respect.   I'm prepared to countenance situations in which respectful people will pursue their own good at the expense of animals--i.e. situations in which harming or killing is a necessary evil. (Animalkind embraces this "necessity" standard and gives examples of justifiable use.)

Anyhow, the point is that on some views in animal ethics, we can help animals in two radically different, incommensurable ways--by securing their rights and by improving their welfare -- with one way running deeper than the other. But on other views, there's just one basic parameter--such as respect.  So we do better by animals on the very same parameter, whether we give them more liberty or go much further and save them from all exploitation. This sort of "one parameter not two" approach can take many forms.  The respect approach in my book is one; the capacities approach in Martha Nussbaum's book Frontiers of Justice also eschews any sharp rights/welfare distinction; and of course utilitarians take a one parameter approach, with that one parameter being well-being (rights, they say, are "nonsense upon stilts").

Because I think in terms of respect, I don't really feel at home with the whole welfare vs. rights debate -- it's not really my debate.  For that reason, this could very well be my last post on the subject.  Time to get back to ... well, all sorts of philosophy-stuff on my desk, but mostly packing.

Two New Reviews of Animalkind

James Stanescu reviews Animalkind at Between the Species. and Gary Varner at Notre Dame Philosophy Reviews.  These reviews are extremely refreshing--both reviewers read the book carefully and have a good grip on what's in it.  (Previous reviewers have...ahem...not always done that.) Both correctly note that I cover a lot of "existing debate," but I think James has a better feel for what the book contributes to that debate.  What I contribute is animal ethics without equality--without even Peter Singer's very minimal "principle of equality."  (See chapter 5 for the argument against it.)  I supporter the "sliding scale view"--as David DeGrazia calls it in his book Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction.  (DeGrazia doesn't cite any supporters of that position and I don't know of any.)  James also makes a good point about how the ambiguity of "respect" is both its strength and weakness. In fact, since finishing the book I've done more thinking about respect, and what properly elicits it, and how it's not inextricably connected to equality.  Here's a revised version of a talk I gave about respect and equality last year.

In Which I am Compared to a Donkey

So, another review of Animalkind has come over the transom, this one from Martin Cohen. I like the first nine words a lot...

Jean Kazez has written a great little book here

and not so much the next seven:

but it is full of bad arguments. (To borrow a phrase from Walter 'Waldo Gazza' Runciman.)

The review briefly gets nicer--

It starts promisingly enough. Kazez has a superb, easy style, and is in full command of the material, at least in terms of the facts. She sweeps up the existing literature on animal exploitation, from UN reports to Peter Singer's polemic against meat-eating, such as Animal Liberation .... Suffice to say she has clearly read a lot on the topic - and she is a natural communicator (just as Singer, in his rather acerbic way, is).

And then gets more weird.

Kazez ... plods obediently, like a donkey perhaps one might say, through as many possible positions on animal rights as she can think of before coming up with a limp kind of utilitarianism.

I actually think I cover the possible positions rather sparingly. A limp kind of utilitarianism? Really, not a utilitarian position at all.

So what are these bad arguments I've supposedly made? Cohen writes--

Above all, we return to the question, is it okay if I eat meat? Yes, if it is important to you and you don't care about the consequences on the world's rainforests/or about climate change. Actually that's one of the book's 'bad arguments'. Kazez says that meat-eating involves deforestation, which it does, and that deforestation causes 'climate change' which it also must, at least locally. But climate is much more complicated than that. In much of the temperate zones, meat can be pastured without any such concerns, and indeed chopping forests there is said to have a cooling effect on the regions. And in the tropics when rainforest is being cleared, much of it is cleared for soya beans - the diet of choice of course for vegetarian authors.

What?  Here's what I write on p. 134--

In the best case scenario, environmentally speaking, animals are pastured on natural grazing land from start to finish and then locally killed. That's the situation in New Zealand, where lamb is locally grown and slaughtered. There's little or no environmental cost to eating meat, over eating plant food, because local arable land is scarce. To replace meat with vegetables would mean flying in supplies from Australia or further away.

So no, I don't link all meat-eating to deforestation and climate-change.

Another misrepresentation--

Kazez however, does not even aspire to persuade the world to stop eating meat, instead opting for the 'low hanging' fruit by arguing for 'pain reduction', quoting approvingly the efforts of Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation, to redesign slaughter houses to reduce the anxiety of the animals being slaughtered there. I'm sure this is a good idea, but then, who exactly opposes it?

"Persuade the world."  That's a tall order, but on pp. 128-131 I do reject Singer's "replacement argument," which says that painlessly killing animals (if you breed replacements) is permissible. On pg. 178 I'm clear that we ought to stop eating meat and other animal products, though admittedly I also say (because it's true) "it's unrealistic to expect every conscientious person to succeed in an immediate and total makeover. For most people, being good is a work in progress, never to be completed."  As to who opposes Temple Grandin's efforts, the answer is: Gary Francione and his followers.

Another error is here--

Another debate which Kazez airs and in my view emerges triumphant, is the issue of whether animals are really just machines driven by automated responses (instinct) or rational 'problem-solving' animals, like wot we're supposed to be. But just as I'm about to be convinced, along comes a lousy argument. Kazez offers the variety of designs of birds' nests, and beaver dams as evidence that animals really are thinking about what they are doing.

No, it's not the "design" of the nest or the dam that's so suggestive, as Cohen imagines.  As I explain (p. 61), what suggests a non-instinctive cognitive process is the way the animals deal with damage to their nests and dams. As I say there, I'm drawing on the very careful and rigorous book Animal Architects, by biologists James and Carol Gould.  I don't think their research can be quickly dismissed.

Yet another mistake--

Many defenders of animal rights, such as Singer, accuse humans of speciesism, that is judging animals prejudicially because they belong to the 'wrong species', but another curious twist in the tale here, is that Kazez thinks the problem is anthropomorphism - respecting animals that are like us more than animals that are very different - like birds.

"If we're biased in placing ourselves on a higher rung than other animals it's a bias we can't avoid", she writes, "but there's a related bias that we can and should void. That's the bias that say there's something special about other animals the more they are genetically and evolutionarily close to us."

There, in a bold sweep, Kazez undoes most of the 'consciousness-raising' efforts of animal welfare groups, on behalf of apes, monkeys and so on, not to mention all our fellow mammals, in favour of a more egalitarian concern for insects, birds, fish and yes, poor old laboratory mice. "The sheer fact that a mouse is a conscious entity, unlike a wind-up, toy mouse, is impressive", she thinks. I like mice too, but to rise their rights up to those of bonobos or chimpanzees seems to be a step backwards.

I'm afraid Cohen just didn't understand the passage. My book is singular in that I reject egalitarian concern.  I have what I call a "sliding scale view" of life value. In the quoted passage I'm merely saying that the sliding scale doesn't mirror genetic or evolutionary proximity. For example, Irene Pepperberg's African gray parrots may occupy the same rung as the great apes on a ladder representing life value. I'm not (remotely) saying that mice have the same moral status as the great apes.

I'm hoping to see a more careful and responsive review of my book one of these days, though I do appreciate Cohen's flattering remarks about my writing style.

TLS Letter

Here's my letter about Jennie Erin Smith's review of Animalkind in The Times Literary Supplement (click on it to make it larger).

More about this inexcusably careless review:  here and here.

I Said What?

Now that I'm back home, I've had a chance to look for the quote that reviewer Jennie Erin Smith took to express the "ultimate conclusion" of Animalkind, in a recent Times Literary Supplement review. 

(Q) Other species do great things for us. For one, they teach us lessons and give us food for thought.

Citing Q, she says my view is that "we owe animals because they do us favours." I was mystified, because Q doesn't sound much like me, let alone like the ultimate thesis of my book.

(I'm also mystified by her assertion that I arrive at Q from "cobbled together anecdotes from Marc Bekoff and others."  In fact, the book contains not even one anecdote from Marc Bekoff--not one!  And it does contain many chapters filled with philosophical argumentation. But never mind...let's talk about Q.)

I've now found the passage.  It's on p. 163 of chapter 9.  The topic of the chapter is endangered species--a secondary topic (that's why I postponed it until the next to last chapter).  The passage is in a section about the view that other species are valuable because of what they do for us--a view I call Protagorean (after the Greek philosopher who claimed that man is the measure of all things).  Q is a sentence within indirect quotation. As in: according to the Protagorean view, it's important to preserve endangered species because _______.  There are two pages of explanation, including Q.

Not only is Q in indirect quotation, so not to be attributed to me as my own view, but I explicitly express misgivings about the Protagorean account of why species matter. 

Try as we may to give depth to the Protagorean view of species, it is inevitably a view with limits. By definition it can’t say that tigers matter because tigers matter: they are intrinsically good, and add to the good of the world. This thought gives everyone a reason to care about endangered species, and gives the activist the strongest inspiration. But we do well to pay attention to the Protagorean reasons as well. In our most hard-headed moments, we may find ourselves not quite sure a varied world is really the best world, or just the one we like best. 

Let's think this through slowly and carefully.  Would it make sense for a reviewer to use Q to capture the ultimate conclusion of my book?  Um, no, it wouldn't. Let us count the ways.  (1) Chapter 9 doesn't deal with the main issue of the book--what we owe to individual animals.  (2) Q is within indirect quotation--it states another view, not my own.  (3) I outright distance myself from that view, instead of endorsing it.

And now for the kicker. (4)  The book contains many "summing up" paragraphs, none of which sound remotely like Q.  In fact, here's one three pages before Q--

If we want to do right by individual animals, I’ve argued, it’s important for us to pay close attention to the sort of capacities that mark their kind. These capacities garner admiration and esteem, and ultimately respect. We must see what makes a chimpanzee different from a squirrel, before we can know our respect must be greater for the chimpanzee. We must see the difference between dolphins and tuna to see that there’s a problem with killing tuna by any method, but a special problem with methods that accidentally kill dolphins as bycatch. A decision whether to use mice or dogs in an experiment (if the experiment is to be done at all) can’t be made well unless we grasp the differences between mice and dog.

No, Animalkind doesn't say "we owe animals because they do us favours."  And that's just problem #1. There are numerous other outright errors in her description of my book, all explained in a letter I've sent to TLS.  I'm frankly shocked by the carelessness of this review.

First Read the Book!

What an amazing misrepresentation of Animalkind I've just read in the Times Literary Supplement.  Jennie Erin Smith accuses me of "piling on" and simplistically attacking animal experimentation, even though (did she notice?!) my chapter on the subject defends animal experimentation!

She sums up my "conclusion" in a sentence that is utterly without foundation--literally, there is no connection to the moral outlook I defend in the book.

Ultimately she arrives at the tired conclusion that we owe animals [sic!] because they do us favours. “Other species do great things for us”, we learn. “For one, they teach us lessons and give us food for thought.”

You simply could not read chapters 5-8 and interpret me that way.  Just not possible.  What I argue is that we owe respect to animals, but less than to humans, because of their capacities.  The respect we owe them has absolutely nothing to do with anything they do for us.  She's mistaken a casual, peripheral remark for the book's substance. [Update 8/9: more on the quote is here.]

If she'd read my book, she would have seen that I'm both an animal advocate and a critic of much current animal advocacy.  The "sliding scale" approach of the book is unusual--it's not at all what you will find in current pro-animal ethics (has she read any?).   All I can think is that Smith grabbed a stack of recent animal books, made up her mind what was in them, based on cover blurbs (yes, I have great blurbs from Bekoff and Singer, but also from Temple Grandin--and that last endorsement tells you something), and then wrote her review.  And then maybe skimmed a bit.  

As the youngsters say:  fail.

Respecting Animals

Angus wrote an awfully nice post about my book while I was gone, and asked a good question:  in defending degrees of respect, with humans entitled to more, how much do I really diverge from Tom Regan's seminal book The Case for Animal Rights?  Though Regan thinks every animal (or rather, every "subject of a life") has the same inherent value, and so has the same prima facie right to be treated with respect, he allows that in certain special situations, we ought to give priority to (normal) humans over (normal) animals.  Given that concession, is there really any more than a verbal difference between my view and his?

In fact, I think there's much more than a verbal difference.  That becomes clear when you consider the nature of the special situations in which Regan thinks that individual differences (between subjects of a life, human or animal) could make a moral difference.  Angus calls them situations of "unavoidable choice," but that suggests you'd be in such a situation much more often than Regan believes. 

The override situations Regan discusses are exactly five. Each one is very carefully analyzed to make it clear why it's an override situation.  That's not to say he's committed to just 5 override situations and not 6 or 7 or 8, but we should go very slowly when we postulate others. When you realize you're in one of these situations, it will sometimes make good moral sense to take into account differences, but not otherwise.

Here are Regan's override situations--

(1) Self defense.
(2) Punishment of the guilty.
(3) Innocent shields.
(4) Innocent threats.
(5) Prevention cases.

Human rights are overridable in these situations just as much as animal rights, and Regan talks mostly about human rights to explain cases (1) - (4).  Thus, most of his discussion of how animal rights may be overridden focuses on prevention cases.  But it's particularly when you focus on the whole list of override cases that you appreciate that he's talking about strange, exceptional circumstances.

"Prevention"  is a technical term here. Not just any situation where a bad is to be prevented qualifies as a "prevention" case.  Here's Regan's famous example--four men and a dog are in a lifeboat.  There's too much weight and all will die if no one goes overboard.  It's key to this being a special case that all on board are at risk--nobody's a bystander. Furthermore, if nothing is done, all will die.  In that singular situation, Regan thinks we ought to pay attention to differences.  We ought to throw a normal dog overboard rather than a healthy 25-year old human because (he says) the dog has less to lose.

Differences could enter into the other situations as well.  Suppose we're in situation (3).  Bad guys are shooting at us. They've deliberately surrounded themselves with innocents. May we take them out, even at risk of killing innocents? If we can, the next question is when to do it.  Suppose (this is my example, not Regan's) they shoot from a nursery school in the morning and from a zoo in the afternoon.  Regan would presumably say we should fire back in the afternoon. The animals have less to lose.

So Regan does think human-animal differences require us to prioritize human lives in some cases, but the crucial thing to see is that these are very singular cases.  He does not think that human-animal differences make for differences in inherent value or the strength of human vs. animal rights.  He doesn't think that, across the board, humans have priority over animals.

Suppose we are facing a plague that could kill a million human beings.  It doesn't affect dogs at all. Scientists discover, however, that the liver of a dog contains a miraculous cure.  By killing one dog, we can save a million.  Can we do it?  Definitely not, on Regan's view. This is not a prevention case, because the dog is not at risk.  It's also not self-defense: the dog is not attacking us. It's not any of the override situations.  The dog's right to be treated with respect protects him from being used to solve a problem that has nothing to do with him.  You can even picture this scenario taking place on a sinking lifeboat, and Regan will still say the dog cannot be sacrificed.  (See The Case for Animal Rights, pg. 385)  Regan is an abolitionist about animal research: we should do none at all, no matter what.

Another situation that's "none of the above" is one in which we simply need to eat an animal to survive (the caveman example in my book).  That's just like the research case, and isn't one of the five override cases.  So Regan's theory does not permit him to think this is morally acceptable either.  (And what matters is the theory.  Oddly, and without enough explanation, he briefly defends eating animals for survival on pg. 351.)

My view, by contrast, is that human-animal differences do make across the board differences in how we may treat them.  They do create differences in inherent value between different species, and they do affect how much respect we owe to members of different species. It's not just in the very peculiar override cases Regan discusses that differences matter. 

How do they matter? Which differences matter?  There's more on this in my book, but some readers will think: vague, not enough detail!  Maybe I should have quoted Aristotle--"Our discussion will be adequate if we make things perspicuous enough to accord with the subject matter."  I'm skeptical that any perfectly clear, detailed, and precise view about the grounds of respect would really be believable.

Francione vs. Smith

Here (see 4/16 podcast) is a debate between Gary Francione and Wesley Smith on the Michael Medved show.  I reviewed Smith's book recently and I've blogged before about Francione.

They start by agreeing on the distinction between "animal welfare" and "animal rights."  Either you support business as usual, but want the usual things to be done nicely, or you think that animals are persons with the rights we usually attribute to persons.  Both are invested in the dichotomy, but for opposite reasons. 

There really is a middle path.  In fact, when Francione makes his argument against eating animals, he doesn't rely on rights talk. He simply says:

(1) It's wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering on animals.

That's an irresistible principle.  It makes for an irresistible argument against meat-eating considering that what we obtain from eating animal products is (usually...in most cases...) just pleasure and convenience.

Wesley Smith fails to respond, instead repeating some familiar bromides about how meat-eating is natural.

Francione quickly forgets he's talking to a defender of the status quo, and starts attacking a completely different foe--Humane Society style animal advocacy (or "welfarism," as he misleadingly calls it). 

Francione comes back to Smith's assertion that it's natural to eat meat.... but Medved wants to talk about medical research. Now it starts to be a problem for Francione that he opened with the irresistible principle.  By any measure, some medical research is necessary.  So how can it be wrong?

Francione back-pedals.  Moral justifiability doesn't turn on what's necessary or unnecessary after all!  He grudgingly concedes that some research is "empirically necessary" and "beneficial"...but no, that's not enough. It appears that he believes the irresistible principle, but also believes:

(2) It's wrong to inflict necessary suffering on animals.

Observation: when someone asserts (1), there's an "implicature" that they reject (2). That's part of what makes (1) so irresistible.  When you assert (1) and then (2), it's a whole new ballgame--the "animals are persons with rights" ballgame.

Next:  a change of subject and a reminder that Smith and Medved are capital "C" Conservatives.  Smith is bothered that Francione believes in a woman's right to abort a fetus but not the right to eat a chicken.  Francione points out that the rights-holding fetus is inside the rights holding woman, whereas the chicken isn't.  There's a difference. He throws in some stuff about racism and patriarchy that elicits derision.

Smith brings up PETA's Holocaust on your Plate campaign.  Colonel Sanders vs. Hitler.  Francione says he isn't interested in ranking evils.   It's all wrong.

Medved:  In Exodus, Moses kills the overseer who is beating an innocent slave.  We generally think that human beings are obligated to kill others and risk their own lives to stop the suffering and death of human beings.  Are human beings obligated to do the same to stop the suffering and death of animals?

Francione: Moses shouldn't have killed the overseer. (Smith points out that Francione is a pacifist.)

Medved shifts the focus from killing bad people to sacrificing yourself to prevent their misdeeds. What about sacrificing yourself to save 1000 people. If that's obligatory, must you do the same to save 1000 animals?

Francione: You could save 1000 right now by donating your organs at a hospital.  It's not obligatory, but it's admirable.  

OK, but would it be just as admirable to sacrifice yourself to save 1000 animals as it would be to sacrifice yourself to save 1000 humans?  Francione won't be cornered into answering such questions.

Francione comes back to the idea that it's wrong to impose unnecessary suffering on animals.  99.9% of our use of animals is unnecessary, he says.    It seems a tad disengenuous to keep pushing (1) when he also believes (2). It makes is seem as if he's just applying common sense, when in fact he has a revolutionary view of animals as persons with basic rights as strong as ours.

Smith pipes up about the main claim of his book--animal advocates are undermining human exceptionalism.

Francione:  what is special about humans is our ability to love, feel compassion, reach out, help the vulnerable other.

It really is the height of irony when people like Smith blow the trumpets about human specialness, which to a great degree consists of our extraordinary moral goodness (he says), and then use that to defend hideous acts of cruelty.   Please.  

Medved to Smith: How would we be worse off if the status of animals changed?

Smith: if we see ourselves as just another animal in the forest, we will act like that.

This is one of the very implausible themes of his book.  It's strange how people throw around predictions without any evidence to support them.  Are animal advocates really a more "animalistic" bunch than the rest of us?  I had not noticed that. 

He goes on to say: we'd be worse off without meat, medical research, wool coats, horse riding, etc.

Surprise revelation during this debate:  conservative commentator Michael Medved is close to being a vegetarian (he only eats fish).  Based on that and his line of questions in the interview, I'm going to recommend my book to him (what chutzpah).  Animal ethics without equality--I think that's his stance, and that's what I argue for.

The Argument from Marginal Cases

In an otherwise very positive review of Animalkind (thank you!), Elisa Aaltola chides me for not accepting the argument from marginal cases.  So...let's talk about it!

The argument from marginal cases is really a family of arguments.  You start with a spectrum of cases, perhaps thinking of every creature as standing in a line according to ability.  

Cog and Chimp are just alike, as far as capacities go.  From the fact that we feel equal concern for Norm and Cog, the argument tries to leverage equal concern for Norm, Cog, Chimp, and Mouse.  Here's an example of this sort of argument (this is inspired by Tom Regan, but not directly from his writing).

(1)  Norm and Cog have the same inherent value and thus the same basic rights, despite their huge differences.

(2)  That must be because they share sentience (Regan actually talks about a slightly more advanced but ill-defined attribute--being a "subject of a life").

(3)  But Chimp has sentience too.

(4)  So Chimp has the same inherent value and basic rights as Norm and Cog.

(5)  Mouse has sentience too.

(C)  So Mouse has the same inherent value and basic rights as Norm, Cog, and Chimp.

If this were a good argument it would be prove a lot.  If you thought Norm had a basic right to life, it would prove that Cog, Chimp, and Mouse do too.  That would foreclose many things we normally consider permissible, like experimenting on Chimp or Mouse or eating them, if human survival were at stake. 

Is it a good argument?  We're to affirm (1), which is fine, but I think that affirmation is not simple.  There's a lot going on in our heads when we think Cog has all the same basic rights as Norm.  A lot of this is pretty recent stuff.   If you go far enough back, disabled people actually were seen somewhat as animals are today.  They were used in medical experiments for the benefit of the rest of us (not incessantly, but occasionally), and some were even put on display at fairs.  Amazing, but true.

What we have now is a "championing" mentality.  How dare anyone not give Cog the same rights as Norm?  We identify with Cog, becuase we've been taught to stop thinking of people with disabilities as "other".  We now realize that there are no immutable lines between "us" and "them." If I wind up in an accident or suffering from Alzheimer's disease, I will be disabled. 'That could be me" opens the door to all sorts of caring moral emotions.  So--there's  a lot going on in our heads when we accept (1).

But that stuff is thrown out at the next step.  We are told that Cog's sharing Norm's basic rights rests on nothing but his being sentient like Norm. We are not allowed to see any complexity in our reaction--like its being partly a matter of seeing the capacities Cog does have, and partly a matter of sympathy, and partly a matter of wanting protection for our own relatives some day, and partly a matter of knowing that could be us some day.  We are to abandon all of that and just settle for the idea that Norm and Cog have the same basic rights because they are both sentient.

But how plausible is that? Those who make arguments like this never explain how you get from simple sentience to immensely powerful rights. On the face of it, there's a huge gap to be bridged.  Having basic rights is a hugely significant thing.  Rights are like a magnetic charge that attracts and repels.  If you have rights, that forces all sorts of adjustments on everyone else.  At the very least, they have to "give you your space," however much that may inconvenience them or set back their serious interests.  Sheer sentience can do all that?

In my book I imagine some tiny little creatures called Pangfish. They have limited sentience, consisting in nothing but the ability to suffer headaches.  When the headaches go away, their consciousness fades out.  That's their whole conscious life. I find it utterly fantastic to suppose that on such a slim basis they could have the sort of inviolability that would force me to choose death rather than eating them. Or that would force a medical researcher to let thousands of people die, rather than extracting some life-saving chemical from them.

So I buy (1), but not (2), and that stops the argument from successfully supporting the conclusion.  I think we need a better explanation why Norm and Cog have the same rights, one that refers to things they have in common internally, but also to our emotions, "the social contract" we have as members of one community, self interest, and so on.  I grant that's a hodgepodge, but I think it's better than the obviously inadequate explanation offered by (2).

What I'm saying does not leave Cog out in the cold (obviously).  It also does not leave Chimp and Mouse out in the cold.  The details are discussed at length in my book, but based on what capacities they do have, we do owe them respect, and that does force us to make careful decisions about what we may and may not do to them.  Furthermore, sheer sentience does make some difference. We should not gratuitously cause pain.  If I'm going to eat Mouse because my life depends on it, I shouldn't cause him more pain than necessary.

In short, I don't buy the argument from marginal cases in my book because I think it's very weak. In fact, I'd go further. I find it rather offensive, and so do the students I teach.  The idea that some people are "marginal" offends them.  People with disabilities have only recently been raised in status--in fact, in earlier versions of Animal Liberation, they are referred to as "mental defectives"!  (Good heavens.) Most people in our society do think that animals are "just animals." So the "Cog= Chimp" equation is more likely to demote Cog than to elevate Chimp.  Finally, it's inane to think that animals are like humans, but just less capable. Chimpanzees have capacities and a way of life all their own.  My book champions animals without making any comparisons between them and people with disabilities, and I think that's all to the good.

Animalkind Review

From Times Higher Education--

Philosopher Jean Kazez takes as this book's starting point the difficult, highly relevant, and often avoided question: "How should we treat animals?" She approaches the question from different angles, which one by one coalesce into a coherent argument. This work reads as a journey into animal ethics, within which the author, together with her audience, is seeking to find the right answer.

First, Kazez looks at how we have valued and treated our non-human kin in the past and present. Viewpoints from different cultures, biblical interpretations and grand old philosophers are briefly analysed. After this, attention is placed on the nature of the beast, as Kazez takes a deeper look at what types of minds animals have. The third part concentrates on ethics, and finally, in the fourth part, she reminds us of the context of the question: how what we do to domestic animals affects wild animals and ecology in general.

Kazez has many highly plausible things to say. She attacks the intellectually lazy anthropocentric tradition, according to which animals have very few and very primitive cognitive capacities. The fascinating spectrum of animal capacities is brought to the fore, and the reader is quickly convinced that even if they are instinctual, animals are also highly cognitive creatures, capable of thinking, feeling and awareness. She also argues that animals should be given significantly more respect (all due respect, as she says in the playful tone that runs throughout the book) than contemporary society is willing to admit. We simply cannot treat beings with minds as mere matter, and the horrors to which animals are subject are inexcusable.

What is interesting is that Kazez combines two notions that are usually alien to each other. On the one hand, she argues for ethical vegetarianism and veganism. On the other, she maintains that, while much animal research may lack justification, research that is necessary for the basic welfare of human beings can be justified. We should give up animal products because in the contemporary world they are unnecessary for survival, cause a great deal of suffering and are harmful to the planet - however, vivisection is justified when absolutely necessary.

Overall, the arguments she presents are intelligent and convincing. But she does get into trouble when she seeks to justify vivisection. Most specifically, Kazez fails to explain away "the case from marginal arguments". If we believe it is morally unjustifiable to use human beings of very low cognitive ability in experiments, why is it permissible to use animals of a higher cognitive ability? Why is biology (species) so important here, when in other contexts it is highly unimportant (biological sex, "race", age, etc)?

Kazez is rather brief in her argument, but the gist is that we favour "unfortunate" humans because of sympathy, and we have sympathy because we could, ourselves, end up like them. Ultimately, we save the mentally impaired because of self-interest. This is rather cynical. One could say that "unfortunate" humans (perhaps an ill-chosen term) have value in themselves and deserve respect regardless of our self-interest. There is reason to hold on to the argument common in animal ethics: inherent value is based on the capacity to experience one's existence. This renders experimentation on both humans and animals dubious. Kazez would have done well to explore the philosophy of animal rights more thoroughly.

Setting aside this criticism, Kazez has written a persuasive book. It may not satisfy more radical thinkers and activists, but it will offer brain food for those who follow the taken-for-granted ways of treating animals. Kazez writes in an enjoyable and accessible fashion, and wit and humour are used generously. Combined with many fruitful arguments, this makes the book a good read for anybody curious about whether it is, indeed, morally justifiable to eat one animal and love another.

Reviewer: Elisa Aaltola is lecturer in philosophy, East Finland University, and fellow, Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She is the author of Elainten Moraalinen Arvo (2004), Animal Individuality: Cultural and Moral Categorisations (2006) and is currently writing a book on the ethics of suffering.

I'm going to discuss why I don't accept the argument from marginal cases in another post, but I want to quickly set the record straight on disabilities.  I don't deny that people with severe impairments "have value in themselves and deserve respect regardless of our self-interest."   There is a level of respect owed to each human and animal, and a value we have to recognize, regardless of self-interest.  However, this value is not constant. Its basis is not the minimal fact of "experiencing one's existence."  There are differences that make a moral difference.  For example, if we must eat some animal for dinner, better it should be a rabbit than a chimpanzee.  Is it the same with people--better to rescue the "normal" before the impaired after a natural disaster?  I argue that a second factor kicks in here.  We ought to think about what we would want for ourselves, if we're ever in that position, what we would want for family members, descendants, and those we identify with. There's a "social contract" component to between-humans morality.

Respect is rock bottom and non-negotiable.  But according the same respect to all, regardless of differences--that's a choice. I think it's a reasonable choice when it comes to our treatment of other people.  But not when it comes to animals.  We really should eat the rabbit before the chimpanzee.  Before you say "speciesist!" think about the word. Speciesism is a bias or prejudice.  If there's a reasonable case for "equalizing" people but not animals, to think so is not speciesist.  "Cynical"? I see myself more as struggling to explain things that are hard to explain.  I'd rather say that "all creatures are created equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights," but I'm afraid that just doesn't strike me as true.

Stay tuned for a post about the argument from marginal cases.  It amuses me that some THE editor (surely) mangled the phrase and called it "the case from marginal arguments."  Marginal argument indeed!  I think it's relied upon much too much int the animal ethics literature.

Animalkind Review

Here's James Garvey's review of Animalkind in the curent issue of The Philosophers' Magazine.  I really appreciate his tolerance for shades of grey.

Our thinking about animals is a mess. We moo at a cow in the countryside, maybe pat a little lamb on the head, then enjoy burgers and kebabs for lunch. Philosophers have tried to tidy things up in two ways. The old school argues that animals are more like things than people, so why not treat them as we wish? Recent philosophers say that animals are like us in some morally relevant sense, and we must therefore treat them with the respect owed to human beings. Liberate them from zoos, labs and factory farms, give them rights, and so on.

My fellow blogger and tpm columnist, Jean Kazez, explores a middle path between these views in her book, Animalkind. Animals aren’t just things, she says, but they’re not our equals either. Our lives matter more, but animal lives do still matter – we have to treat them with all due respect, depending on the value their lives have. It’s complicated – and you have to think things through carefully, case by case. Kazez takes the world’s ragged edges seriously. The result is a readable, compelling, and thought-provoking account of our difficult relationship to animals.

Some animals are like us in some senses, not at all like us in others. Marshalling evidence, she says that mammals, birds and fish are almost certainly conscious, but creatures like ticks are probably not. Some animals seem to do some thinking – not human thinking but still thinking – while others don’t. The jury is out on whether certain creatures have a sense of self. Different interpretations are possible concerning the future-directed thoughts of animals. There’s no such thing as chimpanzee moral philosophy, but there’s enough fairness and reciprocity in their behaviour to give us pause.

Kazez’s point is that sharp lines separating animals and people are hard to find – we have differing abilities and complex similarities. Animal defenders and their opponents see clear boundaries and obvious facts which lead to loud but conflicting conclusions. Kazez sees many shades of grey, all the while guided by a certain notion of respect.

She arrives at it by thinking about the different capacities creatures have. “If capacities are what give value to a life, then to compare animal and human lives, we must compare animal and human capacities.” We have a large number of valuable capacities. We can think about the future and the past, about ourselves and others; we have culture, aesthetic abilities, language – and some animals have some of these capacities too, to varying degrees, and other abilities as well. All of this adds value to animal lives, but human lives are especially valuable in comparison. Animals are somewhere on a sliding scale below us, deserving of consideration depending on their particular abilities. We are not all equal, but animal lives are nevertheless worth something. Human lives, though, are worth more.

Before you ask, she does wonder why we should think that human capacities are more valuable. Why think that having a sense of self trumps a cool set of claws? If I could breathe underwater, I’d never stop talking about it. We can try to curb our arrogance, but “we must make judgements, because real-world choices depend on doing so. The judgement most of us arrive at is that there is something special about our capacities and thus about us….[w]e have to move on with our understanding of the way things are, imperfect though it may be.”

The respect we owe animals depends on a complex view of values. The caveman is right to spear the proto-cow, because his family is owed more respect than his prey. Rescue parties are right to save humans before animals, because people are owed more respect than pets. But when we kill animals for something that is not worth the loss of their valuable lives, we are not treating them with the respect they deserve. No ivory trade, no hunting for fun, no leather, no fur hats, no unnecessary animal testing, and no eating meat just to satisfy a taste for it.

Even this final conclusion about our dietary choices is a complicated one. Eating meat because you like the taste is closer to killing for a pretty pelt than a worthwhile medical experiment. However, and this line really got me, “For most people, being good is a work in progress, never to be completed.” Kazez knows that we struggle to be good, and it’s not an all-or-nothing affair. She tells us a lot about her own efforts, including her inability to give up milk with her cappuccino. Some dietary choices are imperfect but still better than others.

There’s no easy answer on any page of this book. There’s no jargon, symbolic notation, or numbered distinctions – just plain, clear English. You are as likely to hear about recent primate studies as the views of philosophers. It presupposes curiosity and intelligence but no special background. It’s the effort of a philosopher doing honest work in the world.

The Cove

Hurray, The Cove won the Oscar for best documentary!  

A concern, a quibble, and a point

I can't complain about a reviewer who calls my book "cogently argued" and compliments me for taking "a fresh, often funny, look at difficult issues." (That's Sanjida O'Connell in BBC Wildlife Magazine.) But I can be just a bit concerned about what she covers in her short review. She makes it seem as if the main message of my book is that Jonas Salk was right to experiment on animals in the 1950s, and prehistoric cavemen were entitled to kill animals for survival. In other words, she seems to think I'm out to defend human prerogatives

But no, not at all. I'm out to defend animals from human disrespect and cruelty. I tackle hard cases like Salk and the caveman in order to be a believable advocate for animals. We know it's OK for a starving caveman to kill for food.  But why?   Another thing we know:  when relief workers go into a disaster area, it's right for the first responders to save the humans first. Again,  that's a very hard thing to explain, but we need to explain it. Otherwise, the whole idea that animals deserve respect and compassion will start to merge with an implausibly extreme egalitarianism.

The discussion of Salk comes from the 8th chapter of Animalkind, which begins with examples of medical research -- the good but also the bad and the ugly. I argue that Salk's research cannot be condemned if we think the caveman's survival hunting is ok.  But that's not the main point of the chapter.  I give lots of examples of horrific animal research, and I argue at length that lab animals are insufficiently protected under US law.  The main point is quite clear -- that we owe much more to animals than we are now giving them, even if they do not have a status exactly equal to our own.

Besides the above concerns, I have a quibble or two.  O'Connell says the number of monkeys killed in Salk's research was 17,000, but that was just in the first stage.  I say the total number was 100,000.  She says in the 50s "medicine had not advanced sufficiently to allow virus culture without live incubators."  But  I point out that by the 50s virus was being cultured in vitro, thanks to the pioneering work of John Enders in the 1940s.

Finally, a philosophical point.  I ague in the book that different animals are owed different amounts of respect.  There's more to respect in a dolphin than in a dust mite, so we must be much more careful to avoid killing dolphins than dust mites.  O'Connell worries that if we think along these lines, we'll have to think sophisticated aliens would be justified in using us for food and experiments.

Perhaps she sees that as a reductio ad absurdum of my position, but I wonder if she could seriously embrace the egalitarianism she seems to be urging upon me.  Does she really want to condemn the caveman, Jonas Salk, and the first responders who save humans first?  If she approves of them, why?  What makes their conduct not just understandable, but right?  My explanation is that there are differences in worth that separate members of different species.  It's not pretty to say so--yes, it sounds nasty and elitist. But that may be what we simply have to think, if we are willing to think about it.

And yes, if we think that way, then we have to accept that humans could get the short end of the stick if we were visited by super-sophisticated aliens.  That's an unpleasant thing to contemplate, but it doesn't seem preposterous. 

A more serious worry, to my mind, is that inegalitarianism about dolphins and dustmites could lead to a pernicious sort of inegalitarianism within our own species.  People aren't as different from each other as dolphins and dustmites, but there are huge differences.   After a natural disaster, the least capable people surely don't have to stand at the back of the line.  I argue that egalitarianism within our species is required, even though egalitarianism between species is not. (For details, see chapters 5 and 6.)

If you're reading the book and have comments feel free...here or by email.

Animalkind

 

 

Animalkind looks to be at Barnes and Noble pretty widely.  And available through amazon, though there seems to be some hold up at amazon.uk.  The six pictures in the book are by Ruth Talman Kazez, an artist with an eye for animals.

Now Available

My book's available at Amazon now, a week earlier than expected.

Snowkind

Today my new book is theoretically available in the UK--or at least Amazon UK no longer says "not yet released." I'm gratified that even though the entire country is covered in snow, people's minds are on animalkind ... or ... er ... snowkind.  The animals themselves seem to be having fun too--like these two igloo-builders.

Some people just can't turn off the tube.

While you wait for this truck to arrive...

... here's a tiny excerpt to keep you going.  

Stay warm!