Ok, I can't take it any more. I'm supposed to be working on a paper but the recent flood of articles regarding Planned Parenthood and abortions are making me loco--but not for the reasons you might think. I'm not going argue for a position regarding abortion but I just want to point a few things out in regards to how a position on the abortion issue "bears" on animals rights if there is going to be a modicum of concern given to moral consistency.
Before continuing I just want to emphasize that this article isn't intended to engage with all of the philosophical literature on abortion--that would require a book or more. The intent is to look at some the most common reasons given for opposing abortion and how they relate to animal rights if moral consistency has any value. At the end I'll briefly
"flip it and reverse it" and suggest how a position on animal rights bears on abortion.
The Basic Argument
One of the most common arguments against abortion is that "it is murder." The argument goes something like this:
P1. Abortion is killing an innocent person.
P2. Killing an innocent person is murder.
P3. Murder is wrong.
C. Therefore abortion is wrong (via transitivity).
Of course the argument only works if you accept P1 which is in fact where the real debate is. Is a fetus a person? And if so, what attributes confer personhood?
Often what you'll hear is that the fetus is a person because they are human and since everyone agrees it's wrong to kill innocent humans, abortion is also wrong. But being human is simply a biological category. What we want to know is what attributes the fetus has that makes its interests worthy of moral consideration. Saying "because it's human" only redescribes what we already know. Nobody is doubting that the fetus is trivially biologically human. We still need an answer to the question "what morally relevant attribute do human fetuses have that makes it so it's wrong to kill them?"
Taking a step back, this is one of my favorite things about philosophy. We ask questions for which the answer seems so obvious that no reasonable person would even think to ask the question in the first place, yet once we ask the question the answer doesn't seem so obvious after all. In this case, the general question is "why is it wrong to kill humans?". As should be clear now, answering "because they are human" is not very satisfying. Duh! We know that! Surely, there must be something about humans that makes it so it's wrong to kill them. What is it?
Rationality
One popular answer is "rationality". Ok, suppose we accept that. Is a fetus rational? Nope. Are some adult mammals rational? Yes (maybe they can't do upper division math but they have a minimal rationality that we recognize in human children). So, if rationality is truly the standard for moral consideration of interests, it seems like we should have less of a problem with abortion than we do with killing pigs and experimenting on primates. Pigs and other adult mammals are orders of magnitude more rational that a fetus--which isn't even rational--and at least as rational as young children.
The obvious reply is that a fetus is potentially rational. It will one day be rational and since rationality is what makes it so we shouldn't kill humans, we shouldn't kill the fetus. One problem with this reply is that it's not clear how potential properties confer current rights. If I will potentially be a landlord does that mean I should get all the rights a landlord has now? Does the fetus that will one day be a university student get all the rights of a university student now? We typically don't give children full rights of adulthood until they have the capacities to exercise those rights. How do you get rights for capacities you don't currently have? That seems a bit odd.
But let's grant that that you can somehow get rights based on your potential attributes, in this case rationality. Is rationality really the measure of moral consideration? Consider: a child poet and an adult logician are both about to die and you can only save one. Is it so clear that you should save the logician? Although rationality seems to play some role in whether we confer moral consideration, it doesn't seem to be the most important consideration. If it were, we should give more moral consideration to adult mammals than fetuses since adult mammals are more rational.
And, even if we grant that a fetus can have rights in virtue of a potential attribute, surely we should also take into account rights that derive from that same actual attribute. In other words, if we want to say that a fetus has certain moral rights in virtue of its potential rationality, consistency demands that we also say that, in so far as living animals are actually rational, they have rights commensurate with their actual rationality. It would be a strange moral theory that confers greater moral status commensurate with potential attributes than actual attributes.
You can run this same argument for potential and actual desires (to live). Although an animal might not be able to express it verbally, it's reasonable to infer from its behavior that it would rather live than die. Does a fetus have desires? Nope. Ok, so we can go the potential or future desires route but accepting this would seem to require us to also accept the actual desires of animals not to be killed.
Pain
OK, so a fetus isn't rational and maybe rationality isn't all there is to having moral status. Maybe the capacity to feel pain is what confers moral consideration? At least in the early stages of development, a fetus is incapable of feeling pain since it has no central nervous system. Animals, on the other hand, do feel pain, so, if pain is the marker of moral consideration, we should give moral consideration to living animals rather than to fetuses. Again we can appeal to potential pain (?) if this even makes sense. Even if we allow it, it seems as though the actual pain of animals should be weighed at least as heavily as the potential pain of a fetus that doesn't ever live to feel that pain--if that even makes sense.
Heart
"But a fetus has a beating heart!!!" Perhaps after 6 weeks this is true. But again, suppose we accept that having a beating heart is what confers moral status and make termination impermissible. Animals have beating hearts too and so too must have moral status and termination of their life is also impermissible.
DNA
Another possible answer is that it's wrong to kill a fetus because it has human DNA. First of all, this criteria is question-begging. We already know that the human fetus has human DNA. What we want to know is why merely having human DNA confers moral status. My fingernail clippings have human DNA. Do they have moral status? Maybe it's replicating human DNA that has moral status. But why? The various organs in my body all have replicating DNA, do those cells have moral status? That seems weird.
Life Begins at Conception
If we charitably employ the term "life" this is trivially true in a biological sense but of course mere descriptive biological facts don't necessarily imply moral conclusions. Typically, for something to be considered alive in a full sense we'd think some degree of self-sufficiency would come into play. Anyhow, is "being alive" all that's required for moral consideration of interests? If that's the case, all animals should also have their relevant interests considered in proportion to how alive they are.
"No! No! It's different because it's human life." Ok, fine. Tell me again what morally relevant attribute a human fetus has that other creatures don't have. And saying "because it's human" again and again doesn't answer the question. It merely redescribes the biological facts but says nothing of the moral facts. We need an answer to the question, "what morally relevant attribute do human fetuses have that living adult animals don't have?"
Life Begins at Conception and In Vitro Fertilization
Although not directly linked to the issue of animal rights, one of the most glaring inconsistencies with the anti-abortion movement is their silence on in vitro fertilization. With most in vitro fertilization usually 8 eggs are fertilized. Do you think that every couple that engages in in vitro fertilization uses all 8? Nope. Maybe they'll use two...(unless you're Octo-mom).
Now, if those that argue that moral life begins at conception take their position seriously they should be protesting in vitro clinics rather than abortion clinics. For each person they prevent from going through with the fertilization procedure they save 6 or 7 human "lives" rather than a measly single life at an abortion clinic.
The reason why they would never do this is because politically their cause would fail and it wouldn't surprise me if at least some people who oppose abortion have used in vitro. Nothing like your own needs and desires to motivate a special pleading argument or initiate motivated reasoning.
To be fair, some in vitro clinics have gotten around this "inconvenient truth" by freezing whatever embryos aren't used. "Hey, we never terminated them, we just froze them forever"--or (more realistically) at least until we forget about it. Anyone with any intellectual honestly should see what a cop-out this is.
The Bottom Line
When we talk about rights we usually think of rights in terms of particular capacities. We don't give children the right to vote or to drive because we don't think they have the relevant capacities. When they develop those capacities they gain the relevant rights. Similarly, we don't give men the same reproductive rights as women because biologically they couldn't exercise these rights. If this is our model of rights (i.e., capacities) then it seems odd to confer rights to something without any relevant capacities. We can of course say that it has the capacity to live but this doesn't distinguish it from any other living thing and so consistency requires either we reject the argument or we confer those same rights on those other living things.
And so, if anti-abortions were sincere in their arguments consistency demands that they just as sincere in their advocacy and protection of animal rights. In short, there should be no meat-eating anti-abortionists.
[Philosophers note: the capacities theory of rights isn't the only theory of rights.]
Flip it and Reverse It
Notice that the consistency requirement works the other way too. If you have strong views against killing animals yet are pro-choice, your views may be inconsistent depending on how you defend your position on animal rights and the stage in a fetuses development up to which you think abortion is permissible. If you think abortion is permissible at a stage in its development where it has some of the attributes that are shared by living animals, then your position is likely to be inconsistent. Or if you think it's just wrong to terminate an animal's life prematurely for any reason then your case for the permissibility of abortion is paper-thin if moral consistency matters--especially if you are OK with late term abortions.
One other puzzle that pro-choice advocates have to deal with is to come up with a morally relevant criteria that distinguishes a late-stage fetus in the womb and a new-born infant. Well, let me qualify that. The distinction has to be made so long as the pro-choice advocate thinks it's wrong to terminate a healthy new-born but permissible to terminate a 3rd trimester fetus. What is the morally relevant attribute that the new-born has that the fetus doesn't have?
And in the interest of fairness, animal rights proponents often point to the gruesomeness of killing animals at the factory level. If gruesomeness is a morally relevant property (which, in my view, is very plausible) late-term abortions are also gruesome and so this gruesomeness should inform our position. To get an idea of what late-term abortions are like, I suggest watching the documentary Lake of Fire which is probably one the best documentaries on the abortion debate.
Showing posts with label Ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethics. Show all posts
Monday, July 27, 2015
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Evidence for Moral Claims Part 2: Coherentism
Overview of Coherentism
The issue on the table is to figure out what it takes for a moral claim to be epistemically justified. The coherentist offers the following general account of justification. A moral belief is justified to the degree that it coheres with the believers other beliefs. In short, justification is cashed out in terms of a belief's inferential relations to other beliefs. Central to the coherentist position is that there is no privileged set of beliefs that ground other beliefs. All beliefs are justified in terms of other beliefs--regardless of what kind of beliefs they are.
Coherentism is perhaps best understood in contrast to foundationalism. A foundationalist holds that certain kinds of beliefs are--well--foundational while others are either inferred from or not as privileged as the foundational set. For example, in terms of justificatory status, Descartes foundationalism privileges a priori beliefs over empirically derived beliefs. That is to say, if an empirically derived belief conflicts with an a priori (or derived from a priori) belief, the latter belief is more justified because a prior beliefs have more justificatory status (i.e., they're more foundational). In contrast, the coherentist would say that the best justified belief is the one which best coheres with the totality of your beliefs--regardless of kind.
I want to emphasize that the coherence theorist (of the type advocated by Sayre-McCord) isn't a theory of truth rather it is a theory of justification. Coherence doesn't make beliefs true, coherence simply justifies a belief for an agent.
Emotional Experiences, Justification, and Coherentism
In my previous post I argued that it's plausible that our emotional reactions to certain situations play an evidential role for moral beliefs. In short, in some cases we use emotions to support moral claims or emotional experiences can change our moral positions. If we think that emotions can sometimes count as evidence for moral claims then, I will argue, coherentism isn't able to capture this type of evidence in its account of how moral claims are justified. In other words, coherence is sufficient for justification but not necessary. The reason for coherentism's difficulty in accounting for emotions as evidence is that (obviously) emotions are very different sorts of things as beliefs. And, on a simple version of coherentism, only beliefs can justify other beliefs.
Let me briefly make explicit the problem. Beliefs--moral or otherwise--are propositional in nature thus can, in principle, have a truth value. Emotions, on the other hand, are not propositional and so cannot have a truth value. So, (obviously) emotions are not the same sort of thing as beliefs. There doesn't seem to be any obvious way on the coherentist model that something non-propositional could count as evidence for a proposition because the only thing that can justify a belief is its relationships to other beliefs.
Coherentism and Perceptual Experience
Well, not so fast. In some cases--namely perceptual experience--it doesn't seem far-fetched to say that something non-propositional could justify a proposition. For example, the experience of seeing red seems to support the proposition "I see red". Or maybe the experience of stubbing your toe plausibly supports the proposition "I'm in pain".
So, even though perceptions aren't--strictly speaking--propositional, the tight connection between direct observation and propositional beliefs should make us willing to allow such experiences as able to justify certain beliefs. (More on this later.)
However, even if we allow perceptual experience to justify beliefs on the coherentist model two problems arise. The first problem is general to all types of experience as evidence and the second regards only extending coherentism to allow emotional experience to play a justificatory role. Let me address the first problem...uh...first.
The Isolation Problem
Suppose all my life I've believed that brick walls are soft. Maybe my parents are the world's greatest pranksters or I was home-schooled or something...Anyway, I've never actually seen a brick wall but I've read a lot about them. As an toddler I was lulled to sleep with stories about their pillowy softness. At dinner my father would regale me with tales of the Great Wall of China which is the longest man-made pillowy structure. In short I have many many beliefs about the pillowy softness of brick walls.
Anyhow, one day I go off into the world and encounter a brick wall, which is perfect timing because I'm really sleepy and could use something comfortable to rest against. I can't wait to feel that pillowy softness. I triumphantly yell "Geronimo!" and sprint head first into the brick wall. To my shock and awe, the wall does not feel pillowy soft. In fact, it feels as hard as a cloud (my parents also taught me that clouds are very very hard). On the coherentist model, despite my experience of hardness, I shouldn't reject my belief that brick walls are pillowy soft. Why? Because I only have one belief "walls are hard" yet I have many many more beliefs that brick walls are pillowy soft and that support "walls are pillowy soft". If justification is a matter of coherence with other beliefs then the latter belief coheres better with the totality of my beliefs than the former.
In short, a problem for coherentism is that there will be at least some cases (perhaps not as far-fetched as my example) where we think a single experience-derived belief warrants over-riding many beliefs. However, on the coherentist model, we shouldn't do this because the single belief won't cohere as well with the totality of beliefs as will the contrary proposition. The single (recalcitrant) belief will not be justified.
It may be that a sophisticated account of coherentism can handle this objection but it's not clear that it can. I'll leave the matter as it is for now and move to my next point.
Emotional vs Perceptual Experiences
Earlier, I suggested that we should allow coherentism to admit perceptual experiences as being capable of justifying beliefs because of the short inference from the experience to the belief. In fact, Sayre-McCord says as much:
Nevertheless, I want to argue that the category "experience" is too vague and is unable to satisfactorily capture both emotional and perceptual experiences. Lumping both into the same category relies an an implicit analogy between the two types of experiences. However, it's not obvious that these two types of experiences share any properties relevant to our purposes. For example, the inference from the experience of seeing a red pen to the belief "I see a red pen" or "the pen is red" is short and obvious (philosophy of perception aside). It's not going to be so obvious in the case of emotions.
Perception is, at its core, representational, yet it's not clear what it is that emotions are representing. Here's where I think the analogy falls apart. Because of this disanalogy, it's not obvious to me how an emotional experience gets us to a propositional belief. Think back to the three ways I suggested emotions function as evidence in our moral reasoning. In the first way we ask our counter-part how they would feel if they were in such and such circumstances. In the second, a feeling (e.g., love) overwhelms a consistent set of beliefs (e.g., that gay marriage is wrong)In the third type of case, visceral images or experiences evoke strong emotions such that we come to endorse a position inconsistent with all our other beliefs. Suppose we are in a debate about the moral permissibility of drones. For example, a proponent of drones might be shown interviews and footage of what families in a small Yemeni village endures on a daily basis as a consequence of drones and reverse his endorsement. To be clear, these interviews and images don't come in the form of argument, rather they are a montage that elicit certain powerful emotions.
In none of these cases is it clear how the emotional experience translates to a propositional belief. (I need to expand on this). And even if we can give some sort of account of how it might we're left with the isolation problem from above. There will be cases where all my previous beliefs cohere best with my previous position on the issue at hand yet the emotional experience over-rides them. The coherentist model tells us that I should reject my new position.
I suppose the coherentist could (coherently) reply that, "yup, you aren't justified in endorsing your new position because it doesn't cohere with the totality of your beliefs." At this point I'm not sure where to go. It looks like the issue turns on who can pound their fists hardest on the table. I want to say that the person's post-emotional experience view is justified by the experience while the coherentist will pound back, with equal vigor, no it isn't!
It seems like we've ended up back at the normative/descriptive divide. As a matter of anthropology, yes, humans do use emotional experience as evidence for beliefs. Whether we should is another matter. And so we return to my conditional claim: If we think that emotions ought to count as evidence for moral claims, coherentism can't accommodate them as such.
Concerns:
1. I'm equivocating on what it is for a belief to be justified and what it is that justifies a belief.
2. What's the phenomenology of adopting a new belief in response to an emotion? How would you characterize it. In many cases it doesn't seem as though any of your other beliefs have changed, yet you adopt a new position. In some cases, is the emotional reaction simply highlighting or giving greater weight to some beliefs rather than others?
3. Coherentist can say "yup, emotions are important to moral reasoning in that they can get us to reflect more deeply on the beliefs we ascribe to yet the emotions themselves don't justify beliefs." In which case I need to throw this whole paper away and start from scratch. But still I want to resist this and say (while pounding my fist on the table) that at least in some cases the emotional experience is providing evidence for a new (?) moral belief.
The issue on the table is to figure out what it takes for a moral claim to be epistemically justified. The coherentist offers the following general account of justification. A moral belief is justified to the degree that it coheres with the believers other beliefs. In short, justification is cashed out in terms of a belief's inferential relations to other beliefs. Central to the coherentist position is that there is no privileged set of beliefs that ground other beliefs. All beliefs are justified in terms of other beliefs--regardless of what kind of beliefs they are.
Coherentism is perhaps best understood in contrast to foundationalism. A foundationalist holds that certain kinds of beliefs are--well--foundational while others are either inferred from or not as privileged as the foundational set. For example, in terms of justificatory status, Descartes foundationalism privileges a priori beliefs over empirically derived beliefs. That is to say, if an empirically derived belief conflicts with an a priori (or derived from a priori) belief, the latter belief is more justified because a prior beliefs have more justificatory status (i.e., they're more foundational). In contrast, the coherentist would say that the best justified belief is the one which best coheres with the totality of your beliefs--regardless of kind.
I want to emphasize that the coherence theorist (of the type advocated by Sayre-McCord) isn't a theory of truth rather it is a theory of justification. Coherence doesn't make beliefs true, coherence simply justifies a belief for an agent.
Emotional Experiences, Justification, and Coherentism
In my previous post I argued that it's plausible that our emotional reactions to certain situations play an evidential role for moral beliefs. In short, in some cases we use emotions to support moral claims or emotional experiences can change our moral positions. If we think that emotions can sometimes count as evidence for moral claims then, I will argue, coherentism isn't able to capture this type of evidence in its account of how moral claims are justified. In other words, coherence is sufficient for justification but not necessary. The reason for coherentism's difficulty in accounting for emotions as evidence is that (obviously) emotions are very different sorts of things as beliefs. And, on a simple version of coherentism, only beliefs can justify other beliefs.
Let me briefly make explicit the problem. Beliefs--moral or otherwise--are propositional in nature thus can, in principle, have a truth value. Emotions, on the other hand, are not propositional and so cannot have a truth value. So, (obviously) emotions are not the same sort of thing as beliefs. There doesn't seem to be any obvious way on the coherentist model that something non-propositional could count as evidence for a proposition because the only thing that can justify a belief is its relationships to other beliefs.
Coherentism and Perceptual Experience
Well, not so fast. In some cases--namely perceptual experience--it doesn't seem far-fetched to say that something non-propositional could justify a proposition. For example, the experience of seeing red seems to support the proposition "I see red". Or maybe the experience of stubbing your toe plausibly supports the proposition "I'm in pain".
So, even though perceptions aren't--strictly speaking--propositional, the tight connection between direct observation and propositional beliefs should make us willing to allow such experiences as able to justify certain beliefs. (More on this later.)
However, even if we allow perceptual experience to justify beliefs on the coherentist model two problems arise. The first problem is general to all types of experience as evidence and the second regards only extending coherentism to allow emotional experience to play a justificatory role. Let me address the first problem...uh...first.
The Isolation Problem
Suppose all my life I've believed that brick walls are soft. Maybe my parents are the world's greatest pranksters or I was home-schooled or something...Anyway, I've never actually seen a brick wall but I've read a lot about them. As an toddler I was lulled to sleep with stories about their pillowy softness. At dinner my father would regale me with tales of the Great Wall of China which is the longest man-made pillowy structure. In short I have many many beliefs about the pillowy softness of brick walls.
Anyhow, one day I go off into the world and encounter a brick wall, which is perfect timing because I'm really sleepy and could use something comfortable to rest against. I can't wait to feel that pillowy softness. I triumphantly yell "Geronimo!" and sprint head first into the brick wall. To my shock and awe, the wall does not feel pillowy soft. In fact, it feels as hard as a cloud (my parents also taught me that clouds are very very hard). On the coherentist model, despite my experience of hardness, I shouldn't reject my belief that brick walls are pillowy soft. Why? Because I only have one belief "walls are hard" yet I have many many more beliefs that brick walls are pillowy soft and that support "walls are pillowy soft". If justification is a matter of coherence with other beliefs then the latter belief coheres better with the totality of my beliefs than the former.
In short, a problem for coherentism is that there will be at least some cases (perhaps not as far-fetched as my example) where we think a single experience-derived belief warrants over-riding many beliefs. However, on the coherentist model, we shouldn't do this because the single belief won't cohere as well with the totality of beliefs as will the contrary proposition. The single (recalcitrant) belief will not be justified.
It may be that a sophisticated account of coherentism can handle this objection but it's not clear that it can. I'll leave the matter as it is for now and move to my next point.
Emotional vs Perceptual Experiences
Earlier, I suggested that we should allow coherentism to admit perceptual experiences as being capable of justifying beliefs because of the short inference from the experience to the belief. In fact, Sayre-McCord says as much:
It's true, coherentism doesn't allow experience as relevant to justification unless and until the experience comes into the person's cognitive economy. Yet, especially in its recognition of cognitively spontaneous beliefs, coherentism leaves room for experiences to enter that cognitive economy unbidden, either thanks to the experiences themselves having cognitive content (in which case it is the content of the experience that serves as evidence or by their being the content of an appropriate cognitive attitude (in which case it is the fact that such an experience occurred that serves as evidence). (Ibid, p. 122)Ultimately, the coherentist is able to admit experience as evidentiary but its justificatory status will still be cashed out in terms of its relations to other beliefs. Let's accept this. Now, what about emotions? They're a kind of experience and so if we've admitted experience it looks like my objection has been met.
Nevertheless, I want to argue that the category "experience" is too vague and is unable to satisfactorily capture both emotional and perceptual experiences. Lumping both into the same category relies an an implicit analogy between the two types of experiences. However, it's not obvious that these two types of experiences share any properties relevant to our purposes. For example, the inference from the experience of seeing a red pen to the belief "I see a red pen" or "the pen is red" is short and obvious (philosophy of perception aside). It's not going to be so obvious in the case of emotions.
Perception is, at its core, representational, yet it's not clear what it is that emotions are representing. Here's where I think the analogy falls apart. Because of this disanalogy, it's not obvious to me how an emotional experience gets us to a propositional belief. Think back to the three ways I suggested emotions function as evidence in our moral reasoning. In the first way we ask our counter-part how they would feel if they were in such and such circumstances. In the second, a feeling (e.g., love) overwhelms a consistent set of beliefs (e.g., that gay marriage is wrong)In the third type of case, visceral images or experiences evoke strong emotions such that we come to endorse a position inconsistent with all our other beliefs. Suppose we are in a debate about the moral permissibility of drones. For example, a proponent of drones might be shown interviews and footage of what families in a small Yemeni village endures on a daily basis as a consequence of drones and reverse his endorsement. To be clear, these interviews and images don't come in the form of argument, rather they are a montage that elicit certain powerful emotions.
In none of these cases is it clear how the emotional experience translates to a propositional belief. (I need to expand on this). And even if we can give some sort of account of how it might we're left with the isolation problem from above. There will be cases where all my previous beliefs cohere best with my previous position on the issue at hand yet the emotional experience over-rides them. The coherentist model tells us that I should reject my new position.
I suppose the coherentist could (coherently) reply that, "yup, you aren't justified in endorsing your new position because it doesn't cohere with the totality of your beliefs." At this point I'm not sure where to go. It looks like the issue turns on who can pound their fists hardest on the table. I want to say that the person's post-emotional experience view is justified by the experience while the coherentist will pound back, with equal vigor, no it isn't!
It seems like we've ended up back at the normative/descriptive divide. As a matter of anthropology, yes, humans do use emotional experience as evidence for beliefs. Whether we should is another matter. And so we return to my conditional claim: If we think that emotions ought to count as evidence for moral claims, coherentism can't accommodate them as such.
Concerns:
1. I'm equivocating on what it is for a belief to be justified and what it is that justifies a belief.
2. What's the phenomenology of adopting a new belief in response to an emotion? How would you characterize it. In many cases it doesn't seem as though any of your other beliefs have changed, yet you adopt a new position. In some cases, is the emotional reaction simply highlighting or giving greater weight to some beliefs rather than others?
3. Coherentist can say "yup, emotions are important to moral reasoning in that they can get us to reflect more deeply on the beliefs we ascribe to yet the emotions themselves don't justify beliefs." In which case I need to throw this whole paper away and start from scratch. But still I want to resist this and say (while pounding my fist on the table) that at least in some cases the emotional experience is providing evidence for a new (?) moral belief.
Saturday, April 25, 2015
What Counts as Evidence for a Moral Belief?
For a couple of years now I've been perplexed by the following problem: What counts as evidence for or justifies a moral belief? Even in asking the question I'm a bit confused because are two possible interpretations of the question (possibly more). We might say that what justifies a moral belief is that it is well-supported by an argument. In other words, it's supported by some other beliefs that are presented in a systematic way. But this isn't a very satisfying answer because inevitably we are going to wonder what supports the justifying beliefs. There's a danger of regress which I'll address later.
What I really mean to ask is, what sorts of things count as evidence for a moral claim? Arguments using other beliefs are one sort of 'thing'. But is that it? Are beliefs the only things that can justify beliefs? I'm compelled by the view that we should admit other sorts of things as evidence, namely, emotions.
At the face of it, it sounds crazy. Imagine you're in court and you believe someone wronged you and the judge asks you to please justify your claim. "What evidence do you have for your claim that Mr. X wronged you?" he asks. "Well," you reply "it just feels like he did." I doubt your case will do to well.
But let's pause for a moment and think about how, from a very early age, moral education proceeds. One way we do things (both as children and as adults) is that we offer arguments and introduce facts in order to support moral conclusions. For example, when a child punches another child we might explain to him that you shouldn't punch other people because punching hurts them. And hurting people is baaaaaad!
On this model we support our claim "one ought not to punch others" with other beliefs. If you read much of the philosophical literature on moral reasoning you might think this is the only tool available for moral education.
A little reflection reveals that it isn't. I submit that in large part support for moral claims comes from the emotions. That is, emotions led support to moral claims and therefore are a kind of evidence. Let's revisit the child puncher to see why. There's a much simpler--and I would argue--more effective way to get him to see why it's true that he shouldn't punch other people. We ask him "how would you feel if someone did that to you?" No argument needed. And I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that he sees the strength of the moral claim more quickly and forcefully than if only the first method had been used.
Appeals to emotions as evidence aren't restricted to the moral education of children. As adults we appeal to emotions in conjunction with arguments as well as when arguments fail to convince others of our moral claim. In fact, we often use the same technique we employ with children. When arguments fail us, to the recalcitrant party we ask "how would you feel if I did that to you?" When the other party makes a genuine effort to introspect on what it would feel like to have x done to them they might come to endorse the claim that they shouldn't x. The change of heart comes about without appeal to argument or beliefs as evidence.
Here's another way we might think that emotions are being used as evidence for a moral position. Most people are aware of the fact that animals are often mistreated on factory farms. They also believe that it would be wrong to support any institution that mistreats animals. Nevertheless, as is often the case, many people don't come to oppose factory farms until they are actually shown videos and images of what occurs inside some of the farms.
What's going on here? It's not as though they acquired any new beliefs. The already knew that animals are often mistreated in factory farms and they already believed that it's wrong to support institutions that mistreat animals. My suggestion is that emotion has played an important evidential role in their position change. So, more generally, it looks like emotions play an evidential role in moral reasoning. It is, admittedly, another step to say that the emotional response to the horrific treatment of animals justifies their changed belief. I will address this concern shortly.
I want to suggest one more way in which I think emotions count as evidence for moral claims. Consider a case of a conservative religious opponent to gay marriage (is there any other kind?). Let's call him Dick. Dick dearly loves his daughter. At some point in her adult life, Dick's daughter confesses to her father that she is gay. Fairly quickly Dick reverses his position on gay marriage. What happened here? Did Dick all of a sudden come in contact with a new, never-before-heard, compelling argument for marriage equality? Did he acquire some new beliefs that support the claim that marriage equality is just? Doubtful. It's also doubtful that he just learned that he has the belief "I love my daughter and I want her to be happy." No, that's not likely it.
Likely, it is his love for his daughter and his desire that she be happy that's doing the work. In fact, it's not implausible that in his entire set of beliefs the only belief that changed was his belief regarding the permissibility of gay marriage.
What I've outlined are a few ways which I think capture how emotions are employed in our everyday moral reasoning. As I alluded above, it is a separate question as to whether emotions ought to be used as evidence; that is to say, whether emotions able to justify moral claims. I don't want to argue for that positive claim here, but I do think it would be odd to say that in our moral reasoning we ought never to take into account our emotions.
For this reason I simply want to defend a conditional claim: if our emotions can sometimes count as evidence for moral claims then several contemporary models of moral reasoning can't adequately account all the ways in which we come to endorse moral claims.
In closing, I want to flag some potential problems with my view. First, I want to quickly return to considering emotions as justificatory. From the fact that we use emotions in moral reasoning it doesn't follow necessarily that we ought to. We might think that emotions can lead us to bad moral conclusions, not just good ones. To say that we ought to use emotions as evidence I'd have to show that our emotions get it right more often than they get it wrong. Or at least pick out the types of cases where they tend to be more reliable than not. I'd also probably have to go through each emotion because some (possibly the reactive emotions) might be less reliable than other emotions. There's no reason to suppose that each emotion is as likely to lead us to a 'good' conclusion.
And while I'm at it, there's a further problem. My account presupposes a moral view. For example, in the gay marriage case we (most people reading my blog) think that Dick's love for his daughter got him to the right answer only because we happen to endorse marriage equality. Someone who didn't endorse that view would say that Dick's love for his daughter blinded him to the truth. On the other hand, any theory of evidence will have to contend with this same problem. Whether a belief leads one to endorse the 'right' position will depend in large part on what you (dear reader) think the right position is.
But on the third hand, there's no need to suppose that a belief has to be true in order to be justified. We can be anti-realist about moral claims and still think that for moral claims some things count as better evidence than others and some claims are better justified than others.
Meh...ethics is complicated.
What I really mean to ask is, what sorts of things count as evidence for a moral claim? Arguments using other beliefs are one sort of 'thing'. But is that it? Are beliefs the only things that can justify beliefs? I'm compelled by the view that we should admit other sorts of things as evidence, namely, emotions.
At the face of it, it sounds crazy. Imagine you're in court and you believe someone wronged you and the judge asks you to please justify your claim. "What evidence do you have for your claim that Mr. X wronged you?" he asks. "Well," you reply "it just feels like he did." I doubt your case will do to well.
But let's pause for a moment and think about how, from a very early age, moral education proceeds. One way we do things (both as children and as adults) is that we offer arguments and introduce facts in order to support moral conclusions. For example, when a child punches another child we might explain to him that you shouldn't punch other people because punching hurts them. And hurting people is baaaaaad!
On this model we support our claim "one ought not to punch others" with other beliefs. If you read much of the philosophical literature on moral reasoning you might think this is the only tool available for moral education.
A little reflection reveals that it isn't. I submit that in large part support for moral claims comes from the emotions. That is, emotions led support to moral claims and therefore are a kind of evidence. Let's revisit the child puncher to see why. There's a much simpler--and I would argue--more effective way to get him to see why it's true that he shouldn't punch other people. We ask him "how would you feel if someone did that to you?" No argument needed. And I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that he sees the strength of the moral claim more quickly and forcefully than if only the first method had been used.
Appeals to emotions as evidence aren't restricted to the moral education of children. As adults we appeal to emotions in conjunction with arguments as well as when arguments fail to convince others of our moral claim. In fact, we often use the same technique we employ with children. When arguments fail us, to the recalcitrant party we ask "how would you feel if I did that to you?" When the other party makes a genuine effort to introspect on what it would feel like to have x done to them they might come to endorse the claim that they shouldn't x. The change of heart comes about without appeal to argument or beliefs as evidence.
Here's another way we might think that emotions are being used as evidence for a moral position. Most people are aware of the fact that animals are often mistreated on factory farms. They also believe that it would be wrong to support any institution that mistreats animals. Nevertheless, as is often the case, many people don't come to oppose factory farms until they are actually shown videos and images of what occurs inside some of the farms.
What's going on here? It's not as though they acquired any new beliefs. The already knew that animals are often mistreated in factory farms and they already believed that it's wrong to support institutions that mistreat animals. My suggestion is that emotion has played an important evidential role in their position change. So, more generally, it looks like emotions play an evidential role in moral reasoning. It is, admittedly, another step to say that the emotional response to the horrific treatment of animals justifies their changed belief. I will address this concern shortly.
I want to suggest one more way in which I think emotions count as evidence for moral claims. Consider a case of a conservative religious opponent to gay marriage (is there any other kind?). Let's call him Dick. Dick dearly loves his daughter. At some point in her adult life, Dick's daughter confesses to her father that she is gay. Fairly quickly Dick reverses his position on gay marriage. What happened here? Did Dick all of a sudden come in contact with a new, never-before-heard, compelling argument for marriage equality? Did he acquire some new beliefs that support the claim that marriage equality is just? Doubtful. It's also doubtful that he just learned that he has the belief "I love my daughter and I want her to be happy." No, that's not likely it.
Likely, it is his love for his daughter and his desire that she be happy that's doing the work. In fact, it's not implausible that in his entire set of beliefs the only belief that changed was his belief regarding the permissibility of gay marriage.
What I've outlined are a few ways which I think capture how emotions are employed in our everyday moral reasoning. As I alluded above, it is a separate question as to whether emotions ought to be used as evidence; that is to say, whether emotions able to justify moral claims. I don't want to argue for that positive claim here, but I do think it would be odd to say that in our moral reasoning we ought never to take into account our emotions.
For this reason I simply want to defend a conditional claim: if our emotions can sometimes count as evidence for moral claims then several contemporary models of moral reasoning can't adequately account all the ways in which we come to endorse moral claims.
In closing, I want to flag some potential problems with my view. First, I want to quickly return to considering emotions as justificatory. From the fact that we use emotions in moral reasoning it doesn't follow necessarily that we ought to. We might think that emotions can lead us to bad moral conclusions, not just good ones. To say that we ought to use emotions as evidence I'd have to show that our emotions get it right more often than they get it wrong. Or at least pick out the types of cases where they tend to be more reliable than not. I'd also probably have to go through each emotion because some (possibly the reactive emotions) might be less reliable than other emotions. There's no reason to suppose that each emotion is as likely to lead us to a 'good' conclusion.
And while I'm at it, there's a further problem. My account presupposes a moral view. For example, in the gay marriage case we (most people reading my blog) think that Dick's love for his daughter got him to the right answer only because we happen to endorse marriage equality. Someone who didn't endorse that view would say that Dick's love for his daughter blinded him to the truth. On the other hand, any theory of evidence will have to contend with this same problem. Whether a belief leads one to endorse the 'right' position will depend in large part on what you (dear reader) think the right position is.
But on the third hand, there's no need to suppose that a belief has to be true in order to be justified. We can be anti-realist about moral claims and still think that for moral claims some things count as better evidence than others and some claims are better justified than others.
Meh...ethics is complicated.
Friday, January 30, 2015
Review and Summary of "Ethics and Observation" by Harmon
Introduction
The major debate in ethics is whether there are objective moral facts. There are a variety of defenses and objections to either position. Those who say there are objective moral facts are called "realists" while those who deny realism are called anti-realists or nihilists (there are actually more positions such as constructivists and non-cognitivists but let's not worry about that).
A popular strategy realists use is to say that moral reasoning is analogous to either scientific reasoning or mathematical reasoning. In super condensed form, the former strategy plays on the idea that scientific reasoning is a recursive spiraling toward the truth. There's a continuous interplay between hypothesis/theory and observation, the one impacting the other. Hypotheses and theories are tested, confirmed or rejected based on the best available observations. Similarly, hypothesis and theories impact how we interpret our observations.
Moral reasoning is no different. We begin "in the middle" with both a moral theory and observations. Particular observations (judgments) influence our moral theories and theories influence how we interpret our observations. In both domains, there's a back and forth between theory and observation and the trajectory or both enterprises aims at truth.
A similar but slightly different argument applies to the analogy between mathematical and moral reasoning. We just as we can't directly observe mathematical facts, we can't directly observe moral facts. We reason our way to them. Also, both moral and mathematical facts don't have a physical existence yet we are sensitive to them: they inform our actions and our view of the world.
Ok, so those are very simplified versions of the arguments. In "Ethics and Observation," Gilbert Harmon challenges both analogies, although he focuses mostly on the first. Harmon's conclusion (at least not in this article) isn't that there's not such thing as moral truth, rather that the analogy between scientific observation and moral observation doesn't hold.
Let's check out his argoomints...
Part 1: The Basic Issue
Can moral principles be tested and confirmed the same way scientific principles can? On the surface it seems they can. For example, I want to know if the principle "whenever it's possible, you should save 5 lives rather than 1."
How do we test this? Well, we can do a thought experiment and see what our verdict would be. Harmon gives this example:
So, is this kind of testing the same as is done in the scientific realm? It doesn't look like it. Scienticians test their hypotheses and theories against the real world not just in their "imagination". It doesn't seem like we can perceive the rightness or wrongness of an act the way you might perceive the color, shape, and mass of an object.
How do scienticians know bluebirds are blue? Because they can look out into the world and see the blueness of the bird in question. But how do we know if an act is wrong? It doesn't seem like you can point to the wrongness or rightness the way you can point to an object's physical properties. And so it seems as though there's a way in which scientific and moral observation are different.
How do we make moral judgments anyway? Harmon gives the following case. You're walking down the street and you happen upon two teenagers (damn teenagers!) pouring gasoline on a cat then ignite it. It doesn't seem like you perform any reasoning process. It's not like you go. Hmmm, let me see, there's a moral principle that
Here's the issue: Are you perceiving something objective or is your reaction simply a product of your particular psychology? That is, if you'd been around when people tortured cats for fun, you might not have made the same judgment from your observation. Likely, your judgment is a reflection of facts about you, not about the act. More on this in a bit...
Part 2: Theory-Laden Observation
Let's get clear on what is meant by observation. In philosophy of science, it's widely recognized that there are no "raw" observations. All observations are "theory-laden." This means that, implicitly or not, we interpret all of our experiences though the lens of a theory of the world. The most basic one is that there are physical things that cause my experiences. This can be a bit difficult to wrap your head around for people who don't live in the wacky world of philosophy but check it out: you don't perceive objects directly...
You have mental representations in "the theatre of your mind" which you interpret as being representative of external physical objects which are the ultimate cause of your perceptual experience. You could be in the matrix with the exact same experiences being piped into your consciousness and nothing would be different. The worlds would be indistinguishable. The leap from the experience as though there are physical objects in my visual field to there are physical objects in my visual field is an unconscious one. But it is nevertheless a theory. You interpret your experiences of the world with the theory that it is physical objects that are causing what you see in your head.
Anyhow, the point is that even at the most fundament level we interpret observations through the lens of a theory. This happens in everyday life and it also happens in science. When a scientician sees a vapor trail in a cloud chamber, he thinks "there's a proton". He has a theory about the fundamental units of matter and the ways they interact with other matter, and that colors his interpretation of the observation. The observation itself doesn't tell him there's a proton. He adds that as a way of interpreting the raw observation. I.e., that he perceive a "proton" is the product of his theory.
Another example comes from biology. Famously (although he has since rejected it), Dawkins interpreted all evolution as being grounded in the selfishness of genes. In short, all selection call be explained by appealing to genes. If you want to know why one trait is more prevalent than another it must be because the genotype responsible for that trait confers greater fitness. His theory of selection (i.e., that genes are the fundamental unit of selection) colors how he interprets evolution.
On the other hand, a competing theory says that, at least for social animals, you have to also take into account group selection; i.e., the unit of select can also be the group. The reason is that altruistic behavior is inexplicable at the genetic level. How can you explain why a genotype that codes for disadvantageous behaviors/traits could outcompete selfish behaviors/traits? The gene-view can't explain it. Disadvantageous traits by definition are disadvantageous and so should be outcompeted by selfish traits. And so this theory views the same evolutionary observations from the level of group selection.
In short, your theory about the unit of section for evolution will color how you interpret the raw data. Same data/raw observations, different interpretation. Your observations are theory-laden.
Similarly, in the moral domain, we interpret our raw observations though the lens of a theory about the world. You have a theory of the moral domain that causes you to judge the teenagers torturing the cat as wrong. If you had a different (moral) theory of the world that excluded animals from the moral domain, you'd interpret your observation differently. Your moral observations are theory-laden.
In that observations are theory-laden, moral and non-moral judgments are alike. The theory we hold of the world colors how we interpret the raw observations in both domains. If there's a difference between moral and scientific observation, it must be something else...
Part 3: Observational Evidence
Here's the difference: In science you need to make assumptions about certain physical facts in order to asplain an observation. In ethics you don't have to assume there are moral facts; alz you need to do it know something about a person's psychology; you can explain someone's observation that an act is wrong based merely on facts about the observer.
The way I like to think about this is to imagine (some of you won't have to imagine cuz you already have this theory) that there are no objective moral facts. There are only moral opinions that arise out of upbringing and psychological disposition. Would the world appear to be any different? People would still opine on what is right or wrong. People would agree on some things, disagree on others. Everything would seem exactly the same...and we could explain people's observations too. We could say, this person believes x is right because his mommy told him so or this person thinks y is wrong because she has an aversion to it. There'd be no unexplainable observations even if there were no moral facts.
Things are different in the case of science. To make a scientific observation you have to assume that there are objective facts about the world. I.e., there is matter and energy, and so on. When I observe that there's a cloud of vapor in a cloud chamber, the only way I can explain it is if I assume there are objective facts about the world: I.e., there's matter. I have theory that there are protons; I observe "stuff" happening that conforms with my theory. Thus, my theory is provisionally confirmed.. And unlike moral observations, you can't explain my observations by merely appealing to facts about my particular psychology and upbringing. You can't explain my observation without also assuming there are protons...there has to something there for me to observe!
To summarize thus far: you can asplain the moral observation ("that's wrong!") by merely appealing to psychological facts about the observer. Moral facts don't need to be "real" to explain why someone might make the judgment. On the other hand, you can't asplain why someone would observe what they take to be a proton unless there actually was something real that existed. They could be wrong about it being a proton, maybe it was a neutron but they had to observe something to explain why they report observing a proton. There must be some fact about the world in order to explain their observation. Merely appealing to psychological facts about the observer won't explain why they had the scientific observation/judgement they did.
Observations as Evidence for Theories
If I have a scientific theory that predicts a particle with such and such properties, observable under such a such conditions, observation of such a phenomena counts as confirming evidence for my theory. But is this the case with moral observations and theories?
Does my observation/judgment that burning the cat is wrong lend credence to my theory that says that it's objectively wrong to burn cats? Let's return to imagining there are no objective moral facts. My judgment doesn't confirm my theory. I'm just extending my theory (i.e., beliefs) to the observation. This will happen regardless of whether there is an objective moral fact about the matter or not.
Again we can contrast this with the scientific observation. If my theory predicts protons but there are no protons (or nothing with the properties my theory predicts), this will impact my theory. Whether there are or are not objective facts about the world matters for scientific observation and their effect on theory.
Let's slow down and make a distinction here between types of observation. There's a sense in which my observation that "it's wrong to torture cats" confirms my moral theory. For example, I have a theory with the principle that it's wrong to cause unnecessary harm and suffering to innocent sentient beings. I see the teenagers lighting the cat and I immediately observe that the act is wrong. It is an instance of causing unnecessary harm and suffering and I observed it to be wrong. That confirms my moral principle. I said that such acts are wrong, I witnessed an instance of such an act, and I also observed that it was wrong. Moral principle is confirmed!
However, there's another sense of observation in which my observation doesn't confirm my theory because it doesn't explain why I think the act is wrong. My observation conforms with my moral theory, that such acts are wrong, but it isn't evidence in favor of my principle. We can imagine another person a few centuries ago who thought it's great entertainment to light cats on fire. They can witness the exact same act, judge that it's not wrong and say "ah! that confirms my theory that it's not wrong to cause harm and suffering to animals! My judgment confirms it!"
Not so in the case of science. If a theory predicts an entity with certain properties and those properties are observed, observing the properties explains why someone has the observation they do. And, bonus, the observation is evidence in favor of their theory/hypothesis. If no entity were observed with the predicted properties, the observation couldn't be made. In short, the scientific (physicalist) theory explains why you observe the entity and properties that you do because the theory is about how the world is. Even if you believed the theory to be false, you'd still have the same observation:
Think Galileo. When the Church officials looked through his telescope, they didn't believe his theory yet what they observed confirmed Galileo's theory, rather than theirs. Their theoretical beliefs couldn't prevent them from seeing the evidence that disconfirmed their own theory and confirmed Galileo's. (Although, in the end they decided to reject the evidence rather than their theory...)
Possible Objection: Scienticians can (and have for all of scientific history) observe the exact same phenomena yet disagree on the theoretical interpretation of the observation. For example, both gene-based and group selection-based evolutionists observe the exact same phenomena. They don't disagree about what's happening. Evolution through differential reproduction and natural section is happening. They disagree about what theory best explains differential reproduction and natural selection. And so, it looks like, in some respects, scientific observation is similar to moral observation.
Two people can observe the exact same thing and disagree as to what theory the observation supports. Just as two people can observe kids torturing a cat and disagree as to whether the case supports their particular moral theories on the treatment of animals, two scientists can both observe the exact same instances of differential reproduction and natural selection and disagree over the unit of selection to explain the observation. That is, they can disagree at the level of theory about how to interpret the observation.
The major debate in ethics is whether there are objective moral facts. There are a variety of defenses and objections to either position. Those who say there are objective moral facts are called "realists" while those who deny realism are called anti-realists or nihilists (there are actually more positions such as constructivists and non-cognitivists but let's not worry about that).
A popular strategy realists use is to say that moral reasoning is analogous to either scientific reasoning or mathematical reasoning. In super condensed form, the former strategy plays on the idea that scientific reasoning is a recursive spiraling toward the truth. There's a continuous interplay between hypothesis/theory and observation, the one impacting the other. Hypotheses and theories are tested, confirmed or rejected based on the best available observations. Similarly, hypothesis and theories impact how we interpret our observations.
Moral reasoning is no different. We begin "in the middle" with both a moral theory and observations. Particular observations (judgments) influence our moral theories and theories influence how we interpret our observations. In both domains, there's a back and forth between theory and observation and the trajectory or both enterprises aims at truth.
A similar but slightly different argument applies to the analogy between mathematical and moral reasoning. We just as we can't directly observe mathematical facts, we can't directly observe moral facts. We reason our way to them. Also, both moral and mathematical facts don't have a physical existence yet we are sensitive to them: they inform our actions and our view of the world.
Ok, so those are very simplified versions of the arguments. In "Ethics and Observation," Gilbert Harmon challenges both analogies, although he focuses mostly on the first. Harmon's conclusion (at least not in this article) isn't that there's not such thing as moral truth, rather that the analogy between scientific observation and moral observation doesn't hold.
Let's check out his argoomints...
Part 1: The Basic Issue
Can moral principles be tested and confirmed the same way scientific principles can? On the surface it seems they can. For example, I want to know if the principle "whenever it's possible, you should save 5 lives rather than 1."
How do we test this? Well, we can do a thought experiment and see what our verdict would be. Harmon gives this example:
Suppose you're a doctor in the emergency section. 6 patients are brought in. All six are in danger of dying but one is much worse off than the others. You can just barely save that person if you devote all of your resources to him and let the others die. Or, you can save the other 5 if you are willing to ignore the most seriously injured person.What do? It seems like this case confirms the moral principle in question. However, this being philosophy, there will be counter-examples a-plenty.
You have 5 patients in the hospital who are dying, each in need of separate organ. ONe needs a kidney, another a lung, a third a heart, and so on. You can save all five if you take a single healthy person and remove his heart, lungs, kidneys, etc... to distribute to these five patients. Just such a healthy person walks into the hospital for routine tests. His test results confirm he'd be a match as an organ donor for all 5 dying patients. If you do nothing he'll survive and 5 will die. If you apply our principle of action, that you ought to always save 5 instead of one whenever you can, then, well, you'll save 5 and only lose one life...What do? It seems like we've tested the moral principle and the test disconfirms it. The moral principle is false (or needs to be modified).
So, is this kind of testing the same as is done in the scientific realm? It doesn't look like it. Scienticians test their hypotheses and theories against the real world not just in their "imagination". It doesn't seem like we can perceive the rightness or wrongness of an act the way you might perceive the color, shape, and mass of an object.
How do scienticians know bluebirds are blue? Because they can look out into the world and see the blueness of the bird in question. But how do we know if an act is wrong? It doesn't seem like you can point to the wrongness or rightness the way you can point to an object's physical properties. And so it seems as though there's a way in which scientific and moral observation are different.
How do we make moral judgments anyway? Harmon gives the following case. You're walking down the street and you happen upon two teenagers (damn teenagers!) pouring gasoline on a cat then ignite it. It doesn't seem like you perform any reasoning process. It's not like you go. Hmmm, let me see, there's a moral principle that
P1. causing unnecessary suffering of innocent creatures is wrong, andWhat actually happens is you move directly to the moral judgment. You just see it's wrong. The process is a direct observation that the act is wrong. No reasoning required.
P2. these youths are engaged in an instance of causing unnecessary suffering to an innocent creature,
C. therefore, what they are doing is wrong.
Here's the issue: Are you perceiving something objective or is your reaction simply a product of your particular psychology? That is, if you'd been around when people tortured cats for fun, you might not have made the same judgment from your observation. Likely, your judgment is a reflection of facts about you, not about the act. More on this in a bit...
Part 2: Theory-Laden Observation
Let's get clear on what is meant by observation. In philosophy of science, it's widely recognized that there are no "raw" observations. All observations are "theory-laden." This means that, implicitly or not, we interpret all of our experiences though the lens of a theory of the world. The most basic one is that there are physical things that cause my experiences. This can be a bit difficult to wrap your head around for people who don't live in the wacky world of philosophy but check it out: you don't perceive objects directly...
You have mental representations in "the theatre of your mind" which you interpret as being representative of external physical objects which are the ultimate cause of your perceptual experience. You could be in the matrix with the exact same experiences being piped into your consciousness and nothing would be different. The worlds would be indistinguishable. The leap from the experience as though there are physical objects in my visual field to there are physical objects in my visual field is an unconscious one. But it is nevertheless a theory. You interpret your experiences of the world with the theory that it is physical objects that are causing what you see in your head.
Anyhow, the point is that even at the most fundament level we interpret observations through the lens of a theory. This happens in everyday life and it also happens in science. When a scientician sees a vapor trail in a cloud chamber, he thinks "there's a proton". He has a theory about the fundamental units of matter and the ways they interact with other matter, and that colors his interpretation of the observation. The observation itself doesn't tell him there's a proton. He adds that as a way of interpreting the raw observation. I.e., that he perceive a "proton" is the product of his theory.
Another example comes from biology. Famously (although he has since rejected it), Dawkins interpreted all evolution as being grounded in the selfishness of genes. In short, all selection call be explained by appealing to genes. If you want to know why one trait is more prevalent than another it must be because the genotype responsible for that trait confers greater fitness. His theory of selection (i.e., that genes are the fundamental unit of selection) colors how he interprets evolution.
On the other hand, a competing theory says that, at least for social animals, you have to also take into account group selection; i.e., the unit of select can also be the group. The reason is that altruistic behavior is inexplicable at the genetic level. How can you explain why a genotype that codes for disadvantageous behaviors/traits could outcompete selfish behaviors/traits? The gene-view can't explain it. Disadvantageous traits by definition are disadvantageous and so should be outcompeted by selfish traits. And so this theory views the same evolutionary observations from the level of group selection.
In short, your theory about the unit of section for evolution will color how you interpret the raw data. Same data/raw observations, different interpretation. Your observations are theory-laden.
Similarly, in the moral domain, we interpret our raw observations though the lens of a theory about the world. You have a theory of the moral domain that causes you to judge the teenagers torturing the cat as wrong. If you had a different (moral) theory of the world that excluded animals from the moral domain, you'd interpret your observation differently. Your moral observations are theory-laden.
In that observations are theory-laden, moral and non-moral judgments are alike. The theory we hold of the world colors how we interpret the raw observations in both domains. If there's a difference between moral and scientific observation, it must be something else...
Part 3: Observational Evidence
Here's the difference: In science you need to make assumptions about certain physical facts in order to asplain an observation. In ethics you don't have to assume there are moral facts; alz you need to do it know something about a person's psychology; you can explain someone's observation that an act is wrong based merely on facts about the observer.
The way I like to think about this is to imagine (some of you won't have to imagine cuz you already have this theory) that there are no objective moral facts. There are only moral opinions that arise out of upbringing and psychological disposition. Would the world appear to be any different? People would still opine on what is right or wrong. People would agree on some things, disagree on others. Everything would seem exactly the same...and we could explain people's observations too. We could say, this person believes x is right because his mommy told him so or this person thinks y is wrong because she has an aversion to it. There'd be no unexplainable observations even if there were no moral facts.
Things are different in the case of science. To make a scientific observation you have to assume that there are objective facts about the world. I.e., there is matter and energy, and so on. When I observe that there's a cloud of vapor in a cloud chamber, the only way I can explain it is if I assume there are objective facts about the world: I.e., there's matter. I have theory that there are protons; I observe "stuff" happening that conforms with my theory. Thus, my theory is provisionally confirmed.. And unlike moral observations, you can't explain my observations by merely appealing to facts about my particular psychology and upbringing. You can't explain my observation without also assuming there are protons...there has to something there for me to observe!
To summarize thus far: you can asplain the moral observation ("that's wrong!") by merely appealing to psychological facts about the observer. Moral facts don't need to be "real" to explain why someone might make the judgment. On the other hand, you can't asplain why someone would observe what they take to be a proton unless there actually was something real that existed. They could be wrong about it being a proton, maybe it was a neutron but they had to observe something to explain why they report observing a proton. There must be some fact about the world in order to explain their observation. Merely appealing to psychological facts about the observer won't explain why they had the scientific observation/judgement they did.
Observations as Evidence for Theories
If I have a scientific theory that predicts a particle with such and such properties, observable under such a such conditions, observation of such a phenomena counts as confirming evidence for my theory. But is this the case with moral observations and theories?
Does my observation/judgment that burning the cat is wrong lend credence to my theory that says that it's objectively wrong to burn cats? Let's return to imagining there are no objective moral facts. My judgment doesn't confirm my theory. I'm just extending my theory (i.e., beliefs) to the observation. This will happen regardless of whether there is an objective moral fact about the matter or not.
Again we can contrast this with the scientific observation. If my theory predicts protons but there are no protons (or nothing with the properties my theory predicts), this will impact my theory. Whether there are or are not objective facts about the world matters for scientific observation and their effect on theory.
Let's slow down and make a distinction here between types of observation. There's a sense in which my observation that "it's wrong to torture cats" confirms my moral theory. For example, I have a theory with the principle that it's wrong to cause unnecessary harm and suffering to innocent sentient beings. I see the teenagers lighting the cat and I immediately observe that the act is wrong. It is an instance of causing unnecessary harm and suffering and I observed it to be wrong. That confirms my moral principle. I said that such acts are wrong, I witnessed an instance of such an act, and I also observed that it was wrong. Moral principle is confirmed!
However, there's another sense of observation in which my observation doesn't confirm my theory because it doesn't explain why I think the act is wrong. My observation conforms with my moral theory, that such acts are wrong, but it isn't evidence in favor of my principle. We can imagine another person a few centuries ago who thought it's great entertainment to light cats on fire. They can witness the exact same act, judge that it's not wrong and say "ah! that confirms my theory that it's not wrong to cause harm and suffering to animals! My judgment confirms it!"
Not so in the case of science. If a theory predicts an entity with certain properties and those properties are observed, observing the properties explains why someone has the observation they do. And, bonus, the observation is evidence in favor of their theory/hypothesis. If no entity were observed with the predicted properties, the observation couldn't be made. In short, the scientific (physicalist) theory explains why you observe the entity and properties that you do because the theory is about how the world is. Even if you believed the theory to be false, you'd still have the same observation:
Think Galileo. When the Church officials looked through his telescope, they didn't believe his theory yet what they observed confirmed Galileo's theory, rather than theirs. Their theoretical beliefs couldn't prevent them from seeing the evidence that disconfirmed their own theory and confirmed Galileo's. (Although, in the end they decided to reject the evidence rather than their theory...)
Possible Objection: Scienticians can (and have for all of scientific history) observe the exact same phenomena yet disagree on the theoretical interpretation of the observation. For example, both gene-based and group selection-based evolutionists observe the exact same phenomena. They don't disagree about what's happening. Evolution through differential reproduction and natural section is happening. They disagree about what theory best explains differential reproduction and natural selection. And so, it looks like, in some respects, scientific observation is similar to moral observation.
Two people can observe the exact same thing and disagree as to what theory the observation supports. Just as two people can observe kids torturing a cat and disagree as to whether the case supports their particular moral theories on the treatment of animals, two scientists can both observe the exact same instances of differential reproduction and natural selection and disagree over the unit of selection to explain the observation. That is, they can disagree at the level of theory about how to interpret the observation.
Sunday, December 7, 2014
Can Ethical Vegetarians and Vegans Own Carnivorous Pets?
Introduction
One thing you learn pretty quickly in philosophy is that committing to a particular principle often commits you to unexpected positions. Since becoming vegetarian I'm starting to realize this a lot in terms of the principles that ground my vegetarianism.
Here's the issue: It seems that the principles that ground vegetarianism or veganism commit us to the conclusion that it's unethical to own carnivorous pets. Lets look at the principles that support vegetarianism and veganism and see how they apply to carnivorous pet ownership.
(Note: For economy I'm going to use vegetarianism to refer also to veganism and "pet" to refer to carnivorous pet).
Argument 1
The most common reason people become vegetarian has to do with Peter Singer's argument which , in abbreviated form, goes something like this:
(P1) Factory farming causes animals to suffer tremendously.
(P2) Suffering is bad and we shouldn't cause it.
(C) We shouldn't eat factory farmed meat (or any meat where the animal suffered).
Notice this argument isn't against killing, only against suffering. The objection to killing a separate reason to reject eating meat which I'll set aside for now.
Here's the problem for people who accept this argument or something like it: Pets eat factory farmed meat. By owning a pet you are contributing to the suffering of many other animals--the very thing you oppose.
It seems as though having a pet is contrary to a vegetarian's ethical commitments. A vegetarian can reply (in some cases): I adopted this pet and I wasn't going to just let it die.
Even if this is true, (P2) seems to commit us to a startling conclusion: we ought to euthanize our pets. Here's why. Lets take for granted that more suffering is worse than less suffering. Your pet has had a pretty good life. Except for the time it spent before you rescued it, live's been pretty good. Almost no suffering. Now, keeping your pet alive over its natural lifetime causes the suffering of many other creatures equal in their capacity to suffer with your pet. Their suffering is of no lesser moral worth than that of your pets. If we are truly committed to (P2), that suffering is bad, and we should cause less rather than more suffering, it seems to follow that we ought to euthanize our happy pets. It will cause less over-all suffering.
Argument 2
If your vegetarianism is founded on the idea that eating meat is wrong because killing is wrong, there's an analogous problem. Lets apply the famous trolly problem to see why. A trolly is barreling down a track and will kill 5 workers working in a tunnel ahead. You can pull a lever and divert the trolly to another tunnel with only one worker. Should you allow the 5 to die or pull the lever, saving the 5 but causing only one worker to die? Most people say pull the lever. It's better to save 5 lives for the "price" of one. So, if we accept this principle and say the lives of animals are of equal value (at least with respect to each other), it seems to follow that we should euthanize our pet (or at least not feed it) to save the 5 animals that will be slaughtered to feed our pet over its lifetime.
Argument 3
You can also run all the same arguments in regards to the environmental cost of raising animals for meat. Owning a pet causes more animals to be raised for meat. More animals=higher environmental cost=more bad. If you euthanize your pet, those future animals don't need to be raised for meat and there is less of an environmental impact. Fewer animals=lower environmental cost=less bad.
Weak Counter Argument: Causal Inefficacy
One way to reply is to say that "well, euthanizing my one pet isn't going to change the meat industry/how much meat is produced." Vegetarians hear (and reject) a version of this same argument when people object to vegetarianism. It's a bad argument. To see why, imagine the pre-emancipation slave owner saying "well, even if I free my slaves, everyone else is still going to have slaves and probably just take my freed slaves anyway." Is this a good argument? Nope. Owning slaves is morally bad regardless of what other people do. You're responsible for the moral consequences of your own actions; what other people do isn't relevant.
Conclusion
As a vegetarian, I don't like any of these conclusions but they seem to follow from the principles I've accepted. At the very least, the principles suggest that, if we don't euthanize our rescued pets we at least have an obligation to ensure that all pets should neutered/spayed to prevent future pets from coming into the world. Also, that once our existing pet dies (naturally) we shouldn't get another pet--rescue or otherwise. That sucks. I can't imagine my life without doge.
One thing you learn pretty quickly in philosophy is that committing to a particular principle often commits you to unexpected positions. Since becoming vegetarian I'm starting to realize this a lot in terms of the principles that ground my vegetarianism.
Here's the issue: It seems that the principles that ground vegetarianism or veganism commit us to the conclusion that it's unethical to own carnivorous pets. Lets look at the principles that support vegetarianism and veganism and see how they apply to carnivorous pet ownership.
(Note: For economy I'm going to use vegetarianism to refer also to veganism and "pet" to refer to carnivorous pet).
Argument 1
The most common reason people become vegetarian has to do with Peter Singer's argument which , in abbreviated form, goes something like this:
(P1) Factory farming causes animals to suffer tremendously.
(P2) Suffering is bad and we shouldn't cause it.
(C) We shouldn't eat factory farmed meat (or any meat where the animal suffered).
Notice this argument isn't against killing, only against suffering. The objection to killing a separate reason to reject eating meat which I'll set aside for now.
Here's the problem for people who accept this argument or something like it: Pets eat factory farmed meat. By owning a pet you are contributing to the suffering of many other animals--the very thing you oppose.
It seems as though having a pet is contrary to a vegetarian's ethical commitments. A vegetarian can reply (in some cases): I adopted this pet and I wasn't going to just let it die.
Even if this is true, (P2) seems to commit us to a startling conclusion: we ought to euthanize our pets. Here's why. Lets take for granted that more suffering is worse than less suffering. Your pet has had a pretty good life. Except for the time it spent before you rescued it, live's been pretty good. Almost no suffering. Now, keeping your pet alive over its natural lifetime causes the suffering of many other creatures equal in their capacity to suffer with your pet. Their suffering is of no lesser moral worth than that of your pets. If we are truly committed to (P2), that suffering is bad, and we should cause less rather than more suffering, it seems to follow that we ought to euthanize our happy pets. It will cause less over-all suffering.
Argument 2
If your vegetarianism is founded on the idea that eating meat is wrong because killing is wrong, there's an analogous problem. Lets apply the famous trolly problem to see why. A trolly is barreling down a track and will kill 5 workers working in a tunnel ahead. You can pull a lever and divert the trolly to another tunnel with only one worker. Should you allow the 5 to die or pull the lever, saving the 5 but causing only one worker to die? Most people say pull the lever. It's better to save 5 lives for the "price" of one. So, if we accept this principle and say the lives of animals are of equal value (at least with respect to each other), it seems to follow that we should euthanize our pet (or at least not feed it) to save the 5 animals that will be slaughtered to feed our pet over its lifetime.
Argument 3
You can also run all the same arguments in regards to the environmental cost of raising animals for meat. Owning a pet causes more animals to be raised for meat. More animals=higher environmental cost=more bad. If you euthanize your pet, those future animals don't need to be raised for meat and there is less of an environmental impact. Fewer animals=lower environmental cost=less bad.
Weak Counter Argument: Causal Inefficacy
One way to reply is to say that "well, euthanizing my one pet isn't going to change the meat industry/how much meat is produced." Vegetarians hear (and reject) a version of this same argument when people object to vegetarianism. It's a bad argument. To see why, imagine the pre-emancipation slave owner saying "well, even if I free my slaves, everyone else is still going to have slaves and probably just take my freed slaves anyway." Is this a good argument? Nope. Owning slaves is morally bad regardless of what other people do. You're responsible for the moral consequences of your own actions; what other people do isn't relevant.
Conclusion
As a vegetarian, I don't like any of these conclusions but they seem to follow from the principles I've accepted. At the very least, the principles suggest that, if we don't euthanize our rescued pets we at least have an obligation to ensure that all pets should neutered/spayed to prevent future pets from coming into the world. Also, that once our existing pet dies (naturally) we shouldn't get another pet--rescue or otherwise. That sucks. I can't imagine my life without doge.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Aristotle's Virtue Ethics: A Common Misunderstanding
The first question of philosophy is "how should I live my life?" Sometimes this is also presented as "what is the good life?" because the trivial answer to the first formulation is "the best way possible." However you want to frame it, it eventually boils down to the same thing. For the purposes of this article, I'll frame it as "what is the best possible way to live?".
For the ancient Greeks, in order to answer the motivating question you need to answer a prior question: what is the good? The idea here is that before you can figure out what a good life is you need to figure out what "good" is, then you'll want to live the life that most partakes in the "good."
As it turns out, there are two types of "good": intrinsic and instrumental. Let's begin with the latter by using an example. Money is an instrumental good because we don't seek it for itself, rather we seek it for the goods we can trade it for. We seek money because with it we can get the things we're really after like vacations, food, nights out, etc... If we were stranded on a deserted island and had a bunch of money, the money would have no value at all (except maybe as toilet paper). This shows that money has no intrinsic value; that is, it has no value itself. It only has instrumental value (i.e., it only has value in so far as it allows us to get other things that we really value).
To summarize, something has instrumental value if we value it only because it gets us things that we really want. The things we really want have intrinsic value: we don't want them in order to get some other thing. Common examples of things that have intrinsic value are love, friendship, happiness, and health. We don't value these things because they get us some other thing; we value them simply for what they are. They are intrinsically good.
Notice that some things have both intrinsic and instrumental value. For example, love and friendship have intrinsic value (we value them for themselves) but they also have instrumental value: they bring us happiness which is a purely intrinsic good. We don't pursue happiness for any other reasons. It's not valued as a means to some other end. Happiness is the reason why we pursue everything else and so we say it is a purely intrinsic good.
Incidentally, by happiness Aristotle did not mean pleasure or any other emotional states. He meant something very different from what we mean by it today, but let's set that aside for the moment and assume his position: For now, all you need to know is that by "happiness" Aristotle means the process of developing and realizing human excellences. To put it another way, happiness isn't an emotional state but a way of being. Assuming this is the case, then everything we do ought to be directed at this end if we want to live a good life.
To summarize up until now: We want to know how we ought to live a good life. In order to answer that question we need to figure out what the chief good is; that thing for which all other things are pursued. Knowing this will allow us to direct our actions. As Aristotle says:
That chief good is happiness. So, if we want to live a good life we ought to pursue things that will lead us to happiness.
In a moment, we're going to come back to this instrumental-intrinsic distinction and Aristotle's definition of happiness but I want to discuss a question that motivates most of moral philosophy, why should I be moral? The answer to this question (for the ancient Greeks) is directly related to the first question of philosophy and its prior question regarding the nature of the good.
Depending on our conception of "the good" our answers to why we should be moral will differ. For example, if I define the good as "whatever brings me pleasure" then there doesn't seem to be any strong reason for me to be moral and none at all where self-interest and morality diverge. The only reason I would have to be moral would be to avoid the consequences of people perceiving me as immoral. Of course, there are many cases where our personal self-interest happily lines up with what is moral and so in these cases I'd derive instrumental goods from being moral (because it serves my own ends, gives me a good reputation, etc...). We want to know if I'd acquire some good from acting morally even in situations where I don't stand to benefit in any obvious way.
Let's break this down (wika-wika). Plato, in a passage of The Republic called "Glaucon's Challenge," asks whether acting morality has any intrinsic value; that is, in addition to the times when acting morally serves our own interests (i.e., has instrumental value) does acting morally have any value above the instrumental goods it gets us; i.e., Is there any reason to value being moral even when there are no instrumental reasons for doing so?
Two other ways of framing this issue make it clear: If you could act immorally yet always be perceived as acting morally and never get caught (i.e., get all the instrumental benefits of acting morally without any personal costs) would you personally be missing out on any good? Or if you acted morally but were perceived as acting immorally, would you gain anything of value? This is Glaucon's challenge to Socrates: Does acting morally have any intrinsic good or is it purely an instrumental good.
In one of my favorite passages in all of philosophy, after giving his argument, Adeimantus (Glaucon's brother) says
Here's where we have to take another detour in order to answer the question. It will seem round-about but bear with me (and Aristotle).
What is the function of a cup? This may sound like a strange question but if we interpret this question the way the Greeks used the word "function", it won't sound so strange. "Function" should be understood as "the attributes that make a thing the sort of thing that it is." When I ask "what is the function of a cup?" I'm asking, what properties make a cup a cup, and not something else? I'll add that even under this definition of function, E-40's lyrics "we out here trying to function" don't make much sense to me.
We might answer that what makes a cup a cup is that it is something that holds fluids and it something that is easy to drink from. The degree to which a cup fulfills its function (i.e., has the properties that make it a cup), is the degree to which the cup is a good cup. For example, a cup with a leak in it (i.e., doesn't hold fluids "excellently") isn't as good a cup as one that does doesn't leak at all. Similarly, a cup that's really awkward to drink from isn't as good a cup as one that is really easy to drink from.
Notice also that if something doesn't hold fluids or can't be drunk from, it isn't a cup! (You are welcome for the profound philosophical insight; it's what we do!). The moral of the story here is that the more excellently something fulfills its essential functions (i.e., exhibits its defining properties), the more excellent that thing is as a such-and-such AND to the degree that something fails to exhibit excellence in its defining features, that thing is not a such-and-such.
So, why are we talking about cups? Wasn't this supposed to be about moral philosophy and Aristotle? Allow me to try to explain how this fits into the puzzle: We want to know what it would require to live a maximally good life. But, if we want to know what a maximally good life is, we need to know all the possible good things there are for humans. This way, like the archer, we can "aim" our actions at them. If it turns out that being moral is one of them and has intrinsic value (not merely instrumental) then we're not going to want to skip out on this good because that would mean excluding ourselves from the maximum good possible. We'd be leaving a piece of the good out.
Before moving forward it's important revisit Aristotle's notion of happiness. Happiness is the process of developing and realizing human excellences. To put it another way, happiness isn't an emotional state but a way of being/living. Happiness, the highest good, is the process of actualizing the qualities that make us human and not something else. To put it simply: happiness=the greatest good for humans=development and exercise of excellence in those features that make humans humans rather than something else.
In order to figure out whether moral virtue has intrinsic goodness we're going to have to figure out what the function of a human being is because we need to know what we need to be excellent at to achieve maximum human goodness/happiness. (Remember by function we mean "the defining features of a human/that which makes a human a human, and not something else).
This brings us back to the humble cup. How did we distinguish between a good cup and a less good cup or not cup? We said it was according to how much something possesses its essential features (i.e., fulfills its "function"). As with the cup, if we are to distinguish between a good human and a less good human, we're going to need to know what a human's essential properties are because maximum happiness will require maximum actualization of those essential properties.
Ah! At this point hopefully some light bulbs are turning on in regards to how everything is going to fit together. Let's see if we can figure out how the intrinsic/instrumental good distinction, the "function" of a human, happiness, morality, and the good life all fit together. First let's ask what traits make a human a human. For Aristotle this is the capacity to reason (and guide our actions according to reason) and live in large communities (i.e., we are "political animals").
The degree to which we are able to live in large communities will depend in large part on our moral virtues. If everyone just runs around acting only according to self-interest ("but I gots mah rights! don't tell me what to do!") without any consideration for others (i.e., not being morally virtuous), then that community will be dysfunctional and those people will not be able to fully develop and exercise important parts their essential human-ness.
Conversely, if everyone exercises moral virtue, the community will flourish along with the particular individuals that inhabit it and people will have a good shot at fully developing their essential features. Maximal development and exercise of the human virtues is the greatest good for humans and this is what happiness consists in. People in a dysfunctional community don't and can't maximally develop the essential features of human beings. Consequentially, they are cut off from full happiness.
Aside: It comes as no surprise to an Aristotlean that the rise of the tin-foil hat "individual-rights-trump-everything" dogma correlates strongly with the demise of community and with it human happiness. Yeah, he called that 2300 years ago.
So, where does this instrumental/intrinsic stuff fit in because it seems like our reason to be moral, on this model, is instrumental. I should be moral so I can be happy, right? I initially thought this and it perplexed me. How could Aristotle have made this obvious error?
(Another) Aside: Here's a rule of thumb for reading philosophy (and life generally). When a thinker whose works have survived centuries and especially millennia seem to contain an obvious error, odds are you have misunderstood their position. In philosophy we call this epistemic humility.
My mistake was to confuse the instrumental good for why we should be moral with the intrinsic good that comes from being moral. Why should I be moral? So I have a shot a maximally good life (instrumental reasons). How do I do that? I have to "get" all the possible "goods". If I don't develop moral virtue, there's no other way for me to acquiring the particular good that comes from being morally virtuous. This is the intrinsic good that comes from being moral.
I'll repeat this because it's a little tricky: We should exercise, develop and actualize our moral virtues so that we can get the full goodness necessary that makes up full human happiness. This is an instrumental reason to be good and it is an instrumental good that comes out of being virtuous, but the particular good that we get from being moral (development of our moral virtues) cannot be obtained any other way except by being morally virtuous (i.e., this is the intrinsic goodness that comes from being moral).
Let's return to the central questions: why should we be moral? Because there is no other way to "get" the fullest human good (i.e., happiness) without actually being moral. To repeat, we might have an instrumental reason for being virtuous (so we can be happy) but there's no way to achieve full human happiness without being morally virtuous because otherwise an important intrinsic good will be missing. People who aren't virtuous are not exercising and developing maximum human excellence. They are not fully developed humans and therefore never have a shot at maximum human happiness. By not being virtuous they are cut off from a possible piece of full human excellence/happiness.
Just like a cup is a cup to the degree that it exhibits the properties that make it a cup and not something else, you are only human to the degree of excellence that you exhibit those attributes that make a human a human, and not something else. The ultimate good for a cup is to possess its essential features in the most excellent way possible. It follows that the ultimate good for a human is the same. And since moral virtue is an essential feature of human beings, if we are to achieve ultimate human good (i.e., the fullest possible happiness) we must develop moral excellence (along with other kinds); otherwise we exclude ourselves from the fullest conception of human good/happiness.
Now, go be an excellent human being!
For the ancient Greeks, in order to answer the motivating question you need to answer a prior question: what is the good? The idea here is that before you can figure out what a good life is you need to figure out what "good" is, then you'll want to live the life that most partakes in the "good."
As it turns out, there are two types of "good": intrinsic and instrumental. Let's begin with the latter by using an example. Money is an instrumental good because we don't seek it for itself, rather we seek it for the goods we can trade it for. We seek money because with it we can get the things we're really after like vacations, food, nights out, etc... If we were stranded on a deserted island and had a bunch of money, the money would have no value at all (except maybe as toilet paper). This shows that money has no intrinsic value; that is, it has no value itself. It only has instrumental value (i.e., it only has value in so far as it allows us to get other things that we really value).
To summarize, something has instrumental value if we value it only because it gets us things that we really want. The things we really want have intrinsic value: we don't want them in order to get some other thing. Common examples of things that have intrinsic value are love, friendship, happiness, and health. We don't value these things because they get us some other thing; we value them simply for what they are. They are intrinsically good.
Notice that some things have both intrinsic and instrumental value. For example, love and friendship have intrinsic value (we value them for themselves) but they also have instrumental value: they bring us happiness which is a purely intrinsic good. We don't pursue happiness for any other reasons. It's not valued as a means to some other end. Happiness is the reason why we pursue everything else and so we say it is a purely intrinsic good.
Incidentally, by happiness Aristotle did not mean pleasure or any other emotional states. He meant something very different from what we mean by it today, but let's set that aside for the moment and assume his position: For now, all you need to know is that by "happiness" Aristotle means the process of developing and realizing human excellences. To put it another way, happiness isn't an emotional state but a way of being. Assuming this is the case, then everything we do ought to be directed at this end if we want to live a good life.
To summarize up until now: We want to know how we ought to live a good life. In order to answer that question we need to figure out what the chief good is; that thing for which all other things are pursued. Knowing this will allow us to direct our actions. As Aristotle says:
Will not the knowledge of [the chief good] then have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right?
That chief good is happiness. So, if we want to live a good life we ought to pursue things that will lead us to happiness.
In a moment, we're going to come back to this instrumental-intrinsic distinction and Aristotle's definition of happiness but I want to discuss a question that motivates most of moral philosophy, why should I be moral? The answer to this question (for the ancient Greeks) is directly related to the first question of philosophy and its prior question regarding the nature of the good.
Depending on our conception of "the good" our answers to why we should be moral will differ. For example, if I define the good as "whatever brings me pleasure" then there doesn't seem to be any strong reason for me to be moral and none at all where self-interest and morality diverge. The only reason I would have to be moral would be to avoid the consequences of people perceiving me as immoral. Of course, there are many cases where our personal self-interest happily lines up with what is moral and so in these cases I'd derive instrumental goods from being moral (because it serves my own ends, gives me a good reputation, etc...). We want to know if I'd acquire some good from acting morally even in situations where I don't stand to benefit in any obvious way.
Let's break this down (wika-wika). Plato, in a passage of The Republic called "Glaucon's Challenge," asks whether acting morality has any intrinsic value; that is, in addition to the times when acting morally serves our own interests (i.e., has instrumental value) does acting morally have any value above the instrumental goods it gets us; i.e., Is there any reason to value being moral even when there are no instrumental reasons for doing so?
Two other ways of framing this issue make it clear: If you could act immorally yet always be perceived as acting morally and never get caught (i.e., get all the instrumental benefits of acting morally without any personal costs) would you personally be missing out on any good? Or if you acted morally but were perceived as acting immorally, would you gain anything of value? This is Glaucon's challenge to Socrates: Does acting morally have any intrinsic good or is it purely an instrumental good.
In one of my favorite passages in all of philosophy, after giving his argument, Adeimantus (Glaucon's brother) says
For the things said indicate that there is no advantage in my being just, if I don't also seem to be, while the labors and penalties involved are evident. But if I'm unjust, but have provided myself with a reputation for justice, a divine life is promised. Therefore, since as the wise make plain to me, 'the seeming overpowers even the truth' and is the master of happiness, one must surely turn wholly to it. [my italics]In other words, the instrumentalist position is pretty compelling. If I want to give myself the best shot at achieving happiness, it's more important to appear to be moral than it is to actually be moral. The costs of acting morally are great, especially if one is going to be perceived as immoral while doing so, and the benefits of appearing moral (even if you aren't actually being moral) are great. What good does the "pretend" moral person miss out on that the real moral person gains? Or does he not miss out on anything?
Here's where we have to take another detour in order to answer the question. It will seem round-about but bear with me (and Aristotle).
What is the function of a cup? This may sound like a strange question but if we interpret this question the way the Greeks used the word "function", it won't sound so strange. "Function" should be understood as "the attributes that make a thing the sort of thing that it is." When I ask "what is the function of a cup?" I'm asking, what properties make a cup a cup, and not something else? I'll add that even under this definition of function, E-40's lyrics "we out here trying to function" don't make much sense to me.
We might answer that what makes a cup a cup is that it is something that holds fluids and it something that is easy to drink from. The degree to which a cup fulfills its function (i.e., has the properties that make it a cup), is the degree to which the cup is a good cup. For example, a cup with a leak in it (i.e., doesn't hold fluids "excellently") isn't as good a cup as one that does doesn't leak at all. Similarly, a cup that's really awkward to drink from isn't as good a cup as one that is really easy to drink from.
Notice also that if something doesn't hold fluids or can't be drunk from, it isn't a cup! (You are welcome for the profound philosophical insight; it's what we do!). The moral of the story here is that the more excellently something fulfills its essential functions (i.e., exhibits its defining properties), the more excellent that thing is as a such-and-such AND to the degree that something fails to exhibit excellence in its defining features, that thing is not a such-and-such.
So, why are we talking about cups? Wasn't this supposed to be about moral philosophy and Aristotle? Allow me to try to explain how this fits into the puzzle: We want to know what it would require to live a maximally good life. But, if we want to know what a maximally good life is, we need to know all the possible good things there are for humans. This way, like the archer, we can "aim" our actions at them. If it turns out that being moral is one of them and has intrinsic value (not merely instrumental) then we're not going to want to skip out on this good because that would mean excluding ourselves from the maximum good possible. We'd be leaving a piece of the good out.
Before moving forward it's important revisit Aristotle's notion of happiness. Happiness is the process of developing and realizing human excellences. To put it another way, happiness isn't an emotional state but a way of being/living. Happiness, the highest good, is the process of actualizing the qualities that make us human and not something else. To put it simply: happiness=the greatest good for humans=development and exercise of excellence in those features that make humans humans rather than something else.
In order to figure out whether moral virtue has intrinsic goodness we're going to have to figure out what the function of a human being is because we need to know what we need to be excellent at to achieve maximum human goodness/happiness. (Remember by function we mean "the defining features of a human/that which makes a human a human, and not something else).
This brings us back to the humble cup. How did we distinguish between a good cup and a less good cup or not cup? We said it was according to how much something possesses its essential features (i.e., fulfills its "function"). As with the cup, if we are to distinguish between a good human and a less good human, we're going to need to know what a human's essential properties are because maximum happiness will require maximum actualization of those essential properties.
Ah! At this point hopefully some light bulbs are turning on in regards to how everything is going to fit together. Let's see if we can figure out how the intrinsic/instrumental good distinction, the "function" of a human, happiness, morality, and the good life all fit together. First let's ask what traits make a human a human. For Aristotle this is the capacity to reason (and guide our actions according to reason) and live in large communities (i.e., we are "political animals").
The degree to which we are able to live in large communities will depend in large part on our moral virtues. If everyone just runs around acting only according to self-interest ("but I gots mah rights! don't tell me what to do!") without any consideration for others (i.e., not being morally virtuous), then that community will be dysfunctional and those people will not be able to fully develop and exercise important parts their essential human-ness.
Conversely, if everyone exercises moral virtue, the community will flourish along with the particular individuals that inhabit it and people will have a good shot at fully developing their essential features. Maximal development and exercise of the human virtues is the greatest good for humans and this is what happiness consists in. People in a dysfunctional community don't and can't maximally develop the essential features of human beings. Consequentially, they are cut off from full happiness.
Aside: It comes as no surprise to an Aristotlean that the rise of the tin-foil hat "individual-rights-trump-everything" dogma correlates strongly with the demise of community and with it human happiness. Yeah, he called that 2300 years ago.
So, where does this instrumental/intrinsic stuff fit in because it seems like our reason to be moral, on this model, is instrumental. I should be moral so I can be happy, right? I initially thought this and it perplexed me. How could Aristotle have made this obvious error?
(Another) Aside: Here's a rule of thumb for reading philosophy (and life generally). When a thinker whose works have survived centuries and especially millennia seem to contain an obvious error, odds are you have misunderstood their position. In philosophy we call this epistemic humility.
My mistake was to confuse the instrumental good for why we should be moral with the intrinsic good that comes from being moral. Why should I be moral? So I have a shot a maximally good life (instrumental reasons). How do I do that? I have to "get" all the possible "goods". If I don't develop moral virtue, there's no other way for me to acquiring the particular good that comes from being morally virtuous. This is the intrinsic good that comes from being moral.
I'll repeat this because it's a little tricky: We should exercise, develop and actualize our moral virtues so that we can get the full goodness necessary that makes up full human happiness. This is an instrumental reason to be good and it is an instrumental good that comes out of being virtuous, but the particular good that we get from being moral (development of our moral virtues) cannot be obtained any other way except by being morally virtuous (i.e., this is the intrinsic goodness that comes from being moral).
Let's return to the central questions: why should we be moral? Because there is no other way to "get" the fullest human good (i.e., happiness) without actually being moral. To repeat, we might have an instrumental reason for being virtuous (so we can be happy) but there's no way to achieve full human happiness without being morally virtuous because otherwise an important intrinsic good will be missing. People who aren't virtuous are not exercising and developing maximum human excellence. They are not fully developed humans and therefore never have a shot at maximum human happiness. By not being virtuous they are cut off from a possible piece of full human excellence/happiness.
Just like a cup is a cup to the degree that it exhibits the properties that make it a cup and not something else, you are only human to the degree of excellence that you exhibit those attributes that make a human a human, and not something else. The ultimate good for a cup is to possess its essential features in the most excellent way possible. It follows that the ultimate good for a human is the same. And since moral virtue is an essential feature of human beings, if we are to achieve ultimate human good (i.e., the fullest possible happiness) we must develop moral excellence (along with other kinds); otherwise we exclude ourselves from the fullest conception of human good/happiness.
Now, go be an excellent human being!
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma (Video)
Hey guys,
Here's a video I made to help my students understand Divine Command theory and the Euthyphro dilemma:
https://plotagon.com/12834
Here's a video I made to help my students understand Divine Command theory and the Euthyphro dilemma:
https://plotagon.com/12834
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Cultural Relativism Vs Moral Objectivism
So, I've been experimenting with a new way to explain major philosophical concepts and issues by video and dialogue (aka, Socratic method). I think dialogue is a much more intuitive way of understanding things.
I'm not able to embed the video but here's the link. Let me know what you think:
https://plotagon.com/12235
I'm not able to embed the video but here's the link. Let me know what you think:
https://plotagon.com/12235
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Standard Arguments for Why It's OK to Eat Meat and Why They Are Much Weaker Than You Think
Introduction
At some point, every semester in my critical thinking class, I issue a challenge to my students. For homework, they have to come up with their best possible argument for why it's OK to eat factory farmed meat. Every class gives variations of the same handful of arguments and they are indeed the same arguments most people give. In class the next day, I formalize the arguments (i.e., break them down into their basic premises) put the arguments up on the overhead and ask them to criticize the arguments themselves. Here's the thing about many arguments (on any topic): when you formalize them, their weaknesses become very apparent to often even their most staunch supporters.
In this post I'll go over the most common arguments people give for why it's OK to eat factory farmed meat. Before you read the arguments it is important that a few empirical facts be made clear. First of all, animals on factory farms undergo unimaginable amounts of suffering. They often suffer from the moment they are born and every moment they are conscious. This is no exaggeration. Arguably, when the animal is killed, this is the best part of its life because it finally ceases to suffer. It would not be hard to argue that these animals would have been better off never having been born than to having to endure the lives that they do.
Pigs are kept in gestation pens with barely enough room to lie down. They do not even have room to turn around. They develop sores from not being able to move from the same place. Their legs splay out when they attempt to stand because their underdeveloped muscles cannot support their weight. The unnatural density of animals confined to the same small space produces unsanitary conditions leading to the spread of bacteria such that the majority develop permanent diarrhea. When piglets are born they often are infected by the bacteria that causes the diarrhea, and die. The dead piglets are then made into a slurry which is mixed back into the pigs' feed and fed to the mothers.
I will end the description here but if you doubt the severity and extent of nightmarish conditions and constant suffering endured by the animals, here are some links to videos. These videos are not the worst I've seen but they are sufficient to convey the point.
Pigs in Gestation Crates
Chickens
Part I: The Standard Arguments
Before reading the following arguments I want to be clear that these arguments apply specifically to factory farming. The ethical implications of eating meat from hunting or "humane" farming practices requires further argument.
Argument 1: The historical argument
(P1) Historically humans have always eaten meat.
(C) It is morally permissible to eat factory farmed meat.
To see why this argument fails we need to fill in the missing premise.
(P2) If humans have done something historically then it is morally permissible.
(P2) causes the argument to fail because it is easily shown to be false. Consider racism, slavery, sexism, genocide, and war. Humans have historically engaged in these practices too. It does not follow from this fact that these practices are morally permissible. The argument commits the fallacy of appeal to tradition.
Argument 2: The Evolutionary Argument
(P1) We are designed to be able to eat meat. (Just look at my teeth! Look at my digestive system!)
(C) It's morally permissible to eat factory farmed meat.
To see why this fails we fill in the missing premise:
(P2) It is morally permissible to act in accordance with whatever capacities we have.
This premise can apply even to those who doubt evolutionary theory. The origin of the capacities is irrelevant to the moral status of the capacities. The argument fails because (P2) is false. We have the capacity to kill, maim, punch, kick, etc yet the fact that these actions arise out of natural capacities is no reason to accept them as morally permissible. This argument fails because it commits the naturalistic fallacy.
Argument 3: I like it. It makes me happy.
(P1) Meat tastes good and eating it give me pleasure.
(C) Eating factory farmed meat is morally permissible.
This argument is so obviously weak it doesn't really need to be addressed. I'll fill in the missing premise and you can do the rest.
(P2) If I enjoy something and it gives me pleasure then it is morally permissible.
Consider for a moment the amount of pleasure you get from eating meat. In order for you to have that pleasure, a sentient animal suffered every single moment of its existence. From its first breath to its last, it suffered so you can say "yum." I don't see how a reasonable person could say that the lifetime of unremitting suffering endured by a sentient creature justifies the satisfaction one gets from a single meal.
Argument 4: We need to eat meat/We need protein.
(P1) We need to eat meat for protein.
(C) Therefore, eating factory farmed meat is morally permissible.
I was guilty of this argument. It was my last reason for not becoming a vegetarian. I mistakenly believed that I couldn't be an athlete on a vegetarian diet (which in itself was a bad argument). For this argument we don't even need to look at the hidden premise. (P1) is empirically false. Entire cultures have been vegetarian for millennia. We don't need to eat meat for sufficient protein. I am a competitive athlete and I have more muscle mass than the average guy yet I am able to achieve this without consuming meat. When I went vegetarian I didn't lose any muscle mass. It is true that there may be a very small segment of the population that might need to eat meat for medical conditions but by and large, this argument fails for most of us.
Argument 5: Other animals eat meat.
(P1) Animals eat other animals and we don't say it's morally wrong.
(C) Therefore, it's morally permissible for humans to eat meat.
We can look at the hidden premise to see why this argument fails but it really isn't necessary. But for fun I'll put it down:
(P2) If other animals do something then it's morally permissible for us.
I won't even address (P2) because it's obviously silly. Consider these other disanalogies instead: (a) animals in the wild (and true carnivores in captivity) genuinely do need to eat meat or they will die. They don't have a choice whereas we do. (b) Humans are capable of moral reasoning while animals are not. (c) Wild animals are not running factory farms.
Argument 6a: What if plants feel pain?
(P1) If plants feel pain then no matter what we eat we'll cause pain and suffering.
(C) It's morally permissible to eat factory farmed meat.
I think people with philosophical tendencies appeal to this argument. I've actually seen it used in the comments section of a philosophy website for philosophers. I probably used it in undergrad. This is the point where philosophers need to get out of their armchairs and read some basic science. The missing premise for this argument to work is:
(P2) Plants can feel pain.
In order to feel pain an organism needs to have a central nervous system. We know plant biology down to the molecular level. They do not have central nervous systems and so cannot feel pain (despite what some crank websites will have you believe).
Argument 6b: How do we know that the animals are suffering? (Yes, people actually make this argument)
(P1) Suffering in an internal phenomenon and so we have no direct way to verify its truth conditions.
(P2) It follows that we can't be sure that animals are suffering,
(C) Therefore eating factory farmed meat is morally permissible.
This is yet another case of undergrad philosophers needing to take a basic science course. The reason why animals are used for medical testing (pain killers included) is because their physiology closely resembles ours. This in itself should undermine the objection. We can go one step further and ask how we know that a fellow human is suffering. The answer is behavior. One might respond that "no, it's because we have language and we can communicate our inner condition this way." But this is clearly false, we don't need someone to tell us they are in pain if we lock them up in a cage and poke them with a cattle prod.
If you are still unconvinced, I recommend you watch the following short video.
Argument 7: But it's hard!
This isn't so much of a argument as it is an excuse. To see why it fails consider how you'd respond to someone who owns a slave that gave you the same excuse.
Part II: Why Give Animals Moral Consideration of their Interests? (I.e., why should we include animals in our moral circle.)
"The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
--Bentham
Basic Argument: Here's an obvious question, what is worse: kicking a dog or kicking a stone? I hope you answered the former. Why do we say it's bad to kick the dog and not the stone? Well, the simple answer is that the dog can feel pain and will suffer while the stone cannot. The dog has an interest in avoiding suffering because suffering is bad. If suffering is bad then it's bad for anything that experiences it. It would seem strange to say of any animal capable of suffering that the (unconsensual) suffering it endures is good or value neutral.
Some people might respond but sometimes suffering is good, like when we work really hard for something or train hard in the gym to get gainz. But this is to confuse the contingent consequences of the suffering with the suffering itself. The suffering itself is bad. Its consequences (in these cases) are good, however, they could have turned out bad (e.g., you get a 'D' on the paper you suffered through, you don't make any gainz after your intense workout). Given the choice between achieving the desired consequence through suffering and achieving it without suffering, most would choose to achieve the consequence without suffering.
We give moral consideration to the dog because it can suffer and we don't give it to the rock because it can't suffer. In short, if a being has the capacity to suffer then it has the right to have its interest in avoiding suffering taken into account.
There are several possible objections to the claim that me must include animals in our moral circle. I want to deal with only one line of these objections:
But They Aren't Human!
The assumption here is that there is some morally relevant property that humans have that animals don't have. Common answers are "rationality" "intelligence" "self-awarenss" and "language".
Reply 1: If these are the relevant moral properties then we should exclude human infants and severely handicapped humans from our moral circle. They do not have these properties. We do not have to consider their suffering in our moral calculus. Adult chimps and other mammals (and some birds) exhibit some of these traits in greater degrees so we ought to consider their interests more than the interests of infants and the severely handicapped. Nevertheless, we do included infants and the severely handicapped in our moral circle because they have the capacity to suffer.
Reply 2: If these are the relevant moral properties then it could follow that one's interests should be considered in proportion to the degree to which one has the relevant properties. The moral interests of highly rational, intelligent, self-aware, and linguistically skilled individuals should be given more consideration that those who have these to a lesser degree. Few people agree with this and so the aforementioned properties are not relevant to moral consideration.
Reply 3: Suppose a severely handicapped human or infant and a normal human were both in a equal amount of pain. You only have enough of a pain killer for one. Splitting the dose will render it ineffective. How do you decide to whom you will administer the dose? Is intelligence, rational thought or capacity for language relevant to your decision? Most people would say no.
Counter-Reply 1: We include infants and the severely handicapped in our moral circle not only because of their capacity to suffer but because they are human.
Reply: This only pushes the same problem back one step. What properties do humans have that distinguishes them from animals in terms of worthiness of moral consideration of interests? You haven't told me yet what's so special about the category "human" as it relates to moral consideration of interests?
Counter-Reply 2: The infant is a potential human.
Reply: Again, this only pushes the same question back one step: What property do humans have that animals don't have that confers moral status?
Last Resort Counter-Reply: You don't get it. WE ARE HUMAN, THEY ARE ANIMALS!!!
This is circular reasoning. Lets lay the argument out to show why:
(P1) We are human and they are animals.
(C) Humans interests are worthy of moral consideration while those of animals aren't.
The only way this argument works is if you add the hidden second premise:
(P2) Human interests are worthy of moral consideration and animals' interests aren't.
Notice that the conclusion of the argument is contained in (P2). The only way the argument works is if you have the conclusion already in the premises. This is the very definition of circular reasoning.
Part III: Argument for Moral Consideration of Pigs and Cows
Watch the following video clip.
Do you think the way they are treating the dogs is wrong? If you do, consider this. Pigs are every bit as intelligent and social as dogs. They are every bit as capable as showing affection for their young and fellow animals. They remember people and other animals. There are very few differences between pigs and dogs in terms of social and cognitive skills. If you think it's wrong to treat dogs in this way what morally relevant property do dogs have that pigs don't? Imagine if we did to dogs what we do to pigs. Would you stand for it? What would you say to some who said: But I really like the taste of dog! or But I need protein! or But we're designed to eat meat--look at my teeth! or But they aren't human!
Think about it.
Part IV: Practical Advice for Becoming a Vegetarian (Or Possibly Vegan)
First an aside on ethical living: When it comes to ethical behavior I favor the Aristotelian approach. That it, we should aim to be virtuous but recognize that we will screw up sometimes. The good life is the activity of virtuous behavior. If you take a rule-based approach (i.e., all or nothing), psychologically, once you've broken the rule most people will just revert to their old habits. Ethical behavior requires daily effort and practice. We will make mistakes but that is no reason to give up the cause.
I'm not ready to give up meat but don't want to support factory farming: What should I do?
There are meat producers that adhere to humane practices and there are many supermarkets from which you can buy meat from humanely raised meat. I'll list a few below. First, there are a couple of distinctions that should be kept in mind to avoid falling prey to marketing hype.
The label "All Natural" means nothing no matter what product it's applied to and (depending on the jurisdiction) "organic" when it is applied to meat might only refer to the animal's diet, not its treatment.
Eggs: Best is "free range." This means the chickens are able to walk around outdoors and have enough space for a normal chicken social life. "Cage free" means that the chicken are kept in a large barn rather than in cages. They may or may not have access to the outdoors. The cage free eggs tend to be priced fairly close to conventional eggs. The free range eggs usually run about 5.00/dozen at Smith's.
Chicken: The same "free range/cage free" distinction applies here too.
Beef: "Grass-fed Free range" beef means the cows got to live a life outside eating grass. Unless indicated otherwise, most beef is from cows confined to feed lots with minimal exercise.
Pork: Look for "pasture-raised" pork. This mean the pigs got to have a somewhat normal life free from the suffering endured in gestation crates.
Meatless meat: Over the last few years as more and more people are going vegetarian/vegan there's been a profit incentive to create good "meatless meats." You can find several brands that make fake chicken, beef, pork, sausage, hot dogs, and cold cuts. The taste and texture of these products is very good and they are almost indistinguishable from the real thing.
The Hard Part
Moving to a vegetarian diet was actually much easier than I thought it'd be. By far the most difficult part was eating out and late night meals after going out, so I will only address those.
Eating Out: Most restaurants offer seafood. The problem is that it usually costs 2 dollars more to get the shrimp or scallop option than it does to get the chicken, pork, or beef. If you're like me and not fabulously wealthy (when's this philosophy thing going to pay off?) then you're price sensitive. What to do? Here's what I do. First watch this short happy video.
Now ask yourself. Would you pay an extra $2.00 to prevent Little Miss Sunshine and chickens just like her from enduring a life-time of suffering? Is it worth $2.00 to you? When I frame my decision in this light, the decision is easy.
Late night: Often after a night out we're tired, hungry, and possibly a bit drunk. Not a good combination for ethical decision-making; trust me, I know! If you go to most fast food restaurants (which are the main type of place open late) you'll find beef, beef, chicken, beef, chicken, and more beef. Luckily, most fast-food places have one fish burger. Maybe it isn't your first choice but it's a way to avoid supporting factory farming. Another solution is to go to a Denny's or IHOP and order eggs and toast/waffle/pancake. Yes, the eggs are probably from battery hens but it's likely the lesser of the available evils.
EDIT: Several commenters have noted that fish should be excluded as a menu option because there's growing evidence that (several species) are capable social cognition and of (most importantly) experiencing pain. This is a legitimate issue in regards to the permissibility of killing. However, the scope of this article is confined to evaluating the moral permissibility of factory farming in relation to the amount of suffering the animals endure over the course of their lifetimes.
At some point, every semester in my critical thinking class, I issue a challenge to my students. For homework, they have to come up with their best possible argument for why it's OK to eat factory farmed meat. Every class gives variations of the same handful of arguments and they are indeed the same arguments most people give. In class the next day, I formalize the arguments (i.e., break them down into their basic premises) put the arguments up on the overhead and ask them to criticize the arguments themselves. Here's the thing about many arguments (on any topic): when you formalize them, their weaknesses become very apparent to often even their most staunch supporters.
In this post I'll go over the most common arguments people give for why it's OK to eat factory farmed meat. Before you read the arguments it is important that a few empirical facts be made clear. First of all, animals on factory farms undergo unimaginable amounts of suffering. They often suffer from the moment they are born and every moment they are conscious. This is no exaggeration. Arguably, when the animal is killed, this is the best part of its life because it finally ceases to suffer. It would not be hard to argue that these animals would have been better off never having been born than to having to endure the lives that they do.
Pigs are kept in gestation pens with barely enough room to lie down. They do not even have room to turn around. They develop sores from not being able to move from the same place. Their legs splay out when they attempt to stand because their underdeveloped muscles cannot support their weight. The unnatural density of animals confined to the same small space produces unsanitary conditions leading to the spread of bacteria such that the majority develop permanent diarrhea. When piglets are born they often are infected by the bacteria that causes the diarrhea, and die. The dead piglets are then made into a slurry which is mixed back into the pigs' feed and fed to the mothers.
I will end the description here but if you doubt the severity and extent of nightmarish conditions and constant suffering endured by the animals, here are some links to videos. These videos are not the worst I've seen but they are sufficient to convey the point.
Pigs in Gestation Crates
Chickens
Part I: The Standard Arguments
Before reading the following arguments I want to be clear that these arguments apply specifically to factory farming. The ethical implications of eating meat from hunting or "humane" farming practices requires further argument.
Argument 1: The historical argument
(P1) Historically humans have always eaten meat.
(C) It is morally permissible to eat factory farmed meat.
To see why this argument fails we need to fill in the missing premise.
(P2) If humans have done something historically then it is morally permissible.
(P2) causes the argument to fail because it is easily shown to be false. Consider racism, slavery, sexism, genocide, and war. Humans have historically engaged in these practices too. It does not follow from this fact that these practices are morally permissible. The argument commits the fallacy of appeal to tradition.
Argument 2: The Evolutionary Argument
(P1) We are designed to be able to eat meat. (Just look at my teeth! Look at my digestive system!)
(C) It's morally permissible to eat factory farmed meat.
To see why this fails we fill in the missing premise:
(P2) It is morally permissible to act in accordance with whatever capacities we have.
This premise can apply even to those who doubt evolutionary theory. The origin of the capacities is irrelevant to the moral status of the capacities. The argument fails because (P2) is false. We have the capacity to kill, maim, punch, kick, etc yet the fact that these actions arise out of natural capacities is no reason to accept them as morally permissible. This argument fails because it commits the naturalistic fallacy.
Argument 3: I like it. It makes me happy.
(P1) Meat tastes good and eating it give me pleasure.
(C) Eating factory farmed meat is morally permissible.
This argument is so obviously weak it doesn't really need to be addressed. I'll fill in the missing premise and you can do the rest.
(P2) If I enjoy something and it gives me pleasure then it is morally permissible.
Consider for a moment the amount of pleasure you get from eating meat. In order for you to have that pleasure, a sentient animal suffered every single moment of its existence. From its first breath to its last, it suffered so you can say "yum." I don't see how a reasonable person could say that the lifetime of unremitting suffering endured by a sentient creature justifies the satisfaction one gets from a single meal.
Argument 4: We need to eat meat/We need protein.
(P1) We need to eat meat for protein.
(C) Therefore, eating factory farmed meat is morally permissible.
I was guilty of this argument. It was my last reason for not becoming a vegetarian. I mistakenly believed that I couldn't be an athlete on a vegetarian diet (which in itself was a bad argument). For this argument we don't even need to look at the hidden premise. (P1) is empirically false. Entire cultures have been vegetarian for millennia. We don't need to eat meat for sufficient protein. I am a competitive athlete and I have more muscle mass than the average guy yet I am able to achieve this without consuming meat. When I went vegetarian I didn't lose any muscle mass. It is true that there may be a very small segment of the population that might need to eat meat for medical conditions but by and large, this argument fails for most of us.
Argument 5: Other animals eat meat.
(P1) Animals eat other animals and we don't say it's morally wrong.
(C) Therefore, it's morally permissible for humans to eat meat.
We can look at the hidden premise to see why this argument fails but it really isn't necessary. But for fun I'll put it down:
(P2) If other animals do something then it's morally permissible for us.
I won't even address (P2) because it's obviously silly. Consider these other disanalogies instead: (a) animals in the wild (and true carnivores in captivity) genuinely do need to eat meat or they will die. They don't have a choice whereas we do. (b) Humans are capable of moral reasoning while animals are not. (c) Wild animals are not running factory farms.
Argument 6a: What if plants feel pain?
(P1) If plants feel pain then no matter what we eat we'll cause pain and suffering.
(C) It's morally permissible to eat factory farmed meat.
I think people with philosophical tendencies appeal to this argument. I've actually seen it used in the comments section of a philosophy website for philosophers. I probably used it in undergrad. This is the point where philosophers need to get out of their armchairs and read some basic science. The missing premise for this argument to work is:
(P2) Plants can feel pain.
In order to feel pain an organism needs to have a central nervous system. We know plant biology down to the molecular level. They do not have central nervous systems and so cannot feel pain (despite what some crank websites will have you believe).
Argument 6b: How do we know that the animals are suffering? (Yes, people actually make this argument)
(P1) Suffering in an internal phenomenon and so we have no direct way to verify its truth conditions.
(P2) It follows that we can't be sure that animals are suffering,
(C) Therefore eating factory farmed meat is morally permissible.
This is yet another case of undergrad philosophers needing to take a basic science course. The reason why animals are used for medical testing (pain killers included) is because their physiology closely resembles ours. This in itself should undermine the objection. We can go one step further and ask how we know that a fellow human is suffering. The answer is behavior. One might respond that "no, it's because we have language and we can communicate our inner condition this way." But this is clearly false, we don't need someone to tell us they are in pain if we lock them up in a cage and poke them with a cattle prod.
If you are still unconvinced, I recommend you watch the following short video.
Argument 7: But it's hard!
This isn't so much of a argument as it is an excuse. To see why it fails consider how you'd respond to someone who owns a slave that gave you the same excuse.
Part II: Why Give Animals Moral Consideration of their Interests? (I.e., why should we include animals in our moral circle.)
"The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
--Bentham
Some people might respond but sometimes suffering is good, like when we work really hard for something or train hard in the gym to get gainz. But this is to confuse the contingent consequences of the suffering with the suffering itself. The suffering itself is bad. Its consequences (in these cases) are good, however, they could have turned out bad (e.g., you get a 'D' on the paper you suffered through, you don't make any gainz after your intense workout). Given the choice between achieving the desired consequence through suffering and achieving it without suffering, most would choose to achieve the consequence without suffering.
We give moral consideration to the dog because it can suffer and we don't give it to the rock because it can't suffer. In short, if a being has the capacity to suffer then it has the right to have its interest in avoiding suffering taken into account.
There are several possible objections to the claim that me must include animals in our moral circle. I want to deal with only one line of these objections:
But They Aren't Human!
The assumption here is that there is some morally relevant property that humans have that animals don't have. Common answers are "rationality" "intelligence" "self-awarenss" and "language".
Reply 1: If these are the relevant moral properties then we should exclude human infants and severely handicapped humans from our moral circle. They do not have these properties. We do not have to consider their suffering in our moral calculus. Adult chimps and other mammals (and some birds) exhibit some of these traits in greater degrees so we ought to consider their interests more than the interests of infants and the severely handicapped. Nevertheless, we do included infants and the severely handicapped in our moral circle because they have the capacity to suffer.
Reply 3: Suppose a severely handicapped human or infant and a normal human were both in a equal amount of pain. You only have enough of a pain killer for one. Splitting the dose will render it ineffective. How do you decide to whom you will administer the dose? Is intelligence, rational thought or capacity for language relevant to your decision? Most people would say no.
Counter-Reply 1: We include infants and the severely handicapped in our moral circle not only because of their capacity to suffer but because they are human.
Reply: This only pushes the same problem back one step. What properties do humans have that distinguishes them from animals in terms of worthiness of moral consideration of interests? You haven't told me yet what's so special about the category "human" as it relates to moral consideration of interests?
Counter-Reply 2: The infant is a potential human.
Reply: Again, this only pushes the same question back one step: What property do humans have that animals don't have that confers moral status?
Last Resort Counter-Reply: You don't get it. WE ARE HUMAN, THEY ARE ANIMALS!!!
This is circular reasoning. Lets lay the argument out to show why:
(P1) We are human and they are animals.
(C) Humans interests are worthy of moral consideration while those of animals aren't.
The only way this argument works is if you add the hidden second premise:
(P2) Human interests are worthy of moral consideration and animals' interests aren't.
Notice that the conclusion of the argument is contained in (P2). The only way the argument works is if you have the conclusion already in the premises. This is the very definition of circular reasoning.
Part III: Argument for Moral Consideration of Pigs and Cows
Watch the following video clip.
Do you think the way they are treating the dogs is wrong? If you do, consider this. Pigs are every bit as intelligent and social as dogs. They are every bit as capable as showing affection for their young and fellow animals. They remember people and other animals. There are very few differences between pigs and dogs in terms of social and cognitive skills. If you think it's wrong to treat dogs in this way what morally relevant property do dogs have that pigs don't? Imagine if we did to dogs what we do to pigs. Would you stand for it? What would you say to some who said: But I really like the taste of dog! or But I need protein! or But we're designed to eat meat--look at my teeth! or But they aren't human!
Think about it.
Part IV: Practical Advice for Becoming a Vegetarian (Or Possibly Vegan)
First an aside on ethical living: When it comes to ethical behavior I favor the Aristotelian approach. That it, we should aim to be virtuous but recognize that we will screw up sometimes. The good life is the activity of virtuous behavior. If you take a rule-based approach (i.e., all or nothing), psychologically, once you've broken the rule most people will just revert to their old habits. Ethical behavior requires daily effort and practice. We will make mistakes but that is no reason to give up the cause.
I'm not ready to give up meat but don't want to support factory farming: What should I do?
There are meat producers that adhere to humane practices and there are many supermarkets from which you can buy meat from humanely raised meat. I'll list a few below. First, there are a couple of distinctions that should be kept in mind to avoid falling prey to marketing hype.
The label "All Natural" means nothing no matter what product it's applied to and (depending on the jurisdiction) "organic" when it is applied to meat might only refer to the animal's diet, not its treatment.
Eggs: Best is "free range." This means the chickens are able to walk around outdoors and have enough space for a normal chicken social life. "Cage free" means that the chicken are kept in a large barn rather than in cages. They may or may not have access to the outdoors. The cage free eggs tend to be priced fairly close to conventional eggs. The free range eggs usually run about 5.00/dozen at Smith's.
Chicken: The same "free range/cage free" distinction applies here too.
Beef: "Grass-fed Free range" beef means the cows got to live a life outside eating grass. Unless indicated otherwise, most beef is from cows confined to feed lots with minimal exercise.
Pork: Look for "pasture-raised" pork. This mean the pigs got to have a somewhat normal life free from the suffering endured in gestation crates.
Meatless meat: Over the last few years as more and more people are going vegetarian/vegan there's been a profit incentive to create good "meatless meats." You can find several brands that make fake chicken, beef, pork, sausage, hot dogs, and cold cuts. The taste and texture of these products is very good and they are almost indistinguishable from the real thing.
The Hard Part
Moving to a vegetarian diet was actually much easier than I thought it'd be. By far the most difficult part was eating out and late night meals after going out, so I will only address those.
Eating Out: Most restaurants offer seafood. The problem is that it usually costs 2 dollars more to get the shrimp or scallop option than it does to get the chicken, pork, or beef. If you're like me and not fabulously wealthy (when's this philosophy thing going to pay off?) then you're price sensitive. What to do? Here's what I do. First watch this short happy video.
Now ask yourself. Would you pay an extra $2.00 to prevent Little Miss Sunshine and chickens just like her from enduring a life-time of suffering? Is it worth $2.00 to you? When I frame my decision in this light, the decision is easy.
Late night: Often after a night out we're tired, hungry, and possibly a bit drunk. Not a good combination for ethical decision-making; trust me, I know! If you go to most fast food restaurants (which are the main type of place open late) you'll find beef, beef, chicken, beef, chicken, and more beef. Luckily, most fast-food places have one fish burger. Maybe it isn't your first choice but it's a way to avoid supporting factory farming. Another solution is to go to a Denny's or IHOP and order eggs and toast/waffle/pancake. Yes, the eggs are probably from battery hens but it's likely the lesser of the available evils.
EDIT: Several commenters have noted that fish should be excluded as a menu option because there's growing evidence that (several species) are capable social cognition and of (most importantly) experiencing pain. This is a legitimate issue in regards to the permissibility of killing. However, the scope of this article is confined to evaluating the moral permissibility of factory farming in relation to the amount of suffering the animals endure over the course of their lifetimes.
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