Just to round out the recent Peter Singer-fest here, I thought I’d get back to basics. One of Singer’s famous, controversial claims is that “all animals are equal” (that’s the title of the first chapter of Animal Liberation). If you take a close look, this idea is not silly, and not easy to refute. It’s a huge improvement on “speciesism”—the bias that makes animals not matter at all.
OK—so what does it mean? It doesn’t mean people and animals are just alike, or should be treated just alike, or anything of the sort. It means that we should attach important to the interests of individuals without regard to their species. The equally weighty interests of a dog and a human shouldn’t be thought to matter to different degrees just because one is a dog and the other a human being.
Singer’s view is not so very radical, and does not lead to hugely counterintuitive conclusions, because he thinks there are lots or differences between the interests of humans and the interests of other animals. So in practice, treating animals and humans as equals allows for a fair amount of different treatment. (This, by the way, makes the equality of all animals not as robust as the equality of blacks and whites, or men and women).
Humans typically have a very serious interest in going on living, he says, because they have lots of preferences and plans concerning their futures. Animals for the most part don’t. So if you’re the proverbial firefighter deciding whether to save the human or the dog, usually the answer is “the human.”
But now suppose you’ve got triage going outside the burning building. A human and a dog are lying there suffering exactly the same pain. Singer thinks this gives them exactly the same interest in getting medical attention. You’d go wrong if you thought the human’s pain mattered more than the dog’s. Of course, if the human is your own kid, you might rush to her first. But you are not to think that human pain really matters more, just because it’s human pain.
So much for explaining and making the case that this is not wild and crazy stuff. It’s not wild and crazy, but (I will confess) I’m also not persuaded. I’m skeptical of the idea that we can decide how much “atoms” matter before looking at wholes. If you put an atom of pain inside a whole that’s more creative, self-expressive, thoughtful, moral, etc., I suspect all that other stuff makes it matter more. It’s a little like a dent on a car. A specific dent matters to one degree or another depending on the worth of the car. Equal dents don’t deserve equal consideration, and I’d say equal pains don’t either.
This becomes more convincing as you focus incrementally on less and less sophisticated animals. When you get to the simplest and most primitive end of the spectrum, it really becomes hard to sustain the idea that equal pains matter exactly equally. For one thing, pains interfere with business as usual. The more primitive an animal’s business as usual, the smaller the cost.
Take a Painon, for example–a simple aquatic creature with a lot of headaches, and an interest in pain-relief. When fed pain-relievers, they drift around in a haze, until the headaches return. Am I really to think their pains matter no less than mine, or yours?
FYI–most people who attack Singer are eager to justify the status quo, eat a ham sandwich, and the like. My criticism is not in that spirit. Ham sandwich? No thanks. I’m just trying to get the underpinnings of animal activism right.
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Trivia question: where does Singer’s chapter title “All Animals are Equal” come from?
Other good books by Singer for the unanointed: The Way We Eat (his most accessible), Practical Ethics (more philosophical), How Are We To Live? (enjoyable book about “the good life”)
Singer titles his book “Animal LIberation”, but can we apply a human concept of freedom to animals?
The phrase “all animals are equal” is probably derived from the line from George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”: all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
I guess this is exactly the parsimony that makes Singer both compelling on an intellectual level, but unpalatable on a practical level.
Please get off the Singer thing ! Most people I know and respect, do not take this guy seriously. Was he raised by chimpanzees or something? I’d like to know where his deranged ideas come from in the context of his upbringing. Surely there is an important underlying pyschological explanation for his views.
Just because something can be rationalised does not mean the counter-intuitiveness of it shoudl be dismissed, or dim in the light of this reason.
As Mann says in Buddenbrooks, ‘Reason is not the highest thing on earth’ . If a view is counter-intuitive then surely sometimes ( I said sometimes people) that means it’s ‘wrong’. End of. Regardless of how it can be reasoned.
To me this is one of those cases, i.e. Animal pain and Human pain are equal, and in the case of a burnign og or human, the dog has equal right to be saves first by another human? That can’t sit well with most people surely. I for one can’t agree with it. Singer is a crackpot.
Richard, maybe you ought to read some Singer? Or alternatively not have such strong opinions? Your last paragraph is incoherent regardless of the fact that it doesn’t describe anything like what Jean wrote. Wow.
In reply to:
“Humans typically have a very serious interest in going on living, he says, because they have lots of preferences and plans concerning their futures. Animals for the most part don’t. So if you’re the proverbial firefighter deciding whether to save the human or the dog, usually the answer is “the human.””
The firefighter example comes from William Godwin, if I remember rightly, friend of the vegetarian poet Shelley. I’ve just been reading the French philosopher and priest Condillac, who thought only language led us to think about what was not immediately to hand or associated with it (on empirical grounds). Maybe animal consciousness is like how we would think wordlessly.
in your example, my pain would awaken all sorts of hopes , fears memories and associations that a dog’s wouldn’t. It might lead me to doubt the love of God for example. In any case, there are dangers of relying on intuition and biology in ethics (e.g. the eugenics debate in the 1930s), though that raises a question of how I am identifying the “danger”!
I don’t eat meat generally though, and have just discovered soya milk.
Hollo by name Hollo by nature Peter. You’re assumig gI haven’t read Singer. Why? Because if I had I would agree with what he says? And what have you got against strong opinions my moody friend? I would go so far as to say that the only opinions worth having are strong ones. Coherecy is in the eye of the beholder. To me my last paragraph is perfectly coherent, save for a few unfortunate but forgivable typo’s ! I love the saracastic ‘Wow’ at the end of your submission I bet you’re a bundle of laughs ! Ha ha!
Richard, Condillac’s view is that there is no conflict between reason and intuition, as what we call “intuitions” are habitual results of prior reasoning.
It is not intuition, but our rational knowledge of dogs and people that is at work in the dog example. On your view, there is a dualism of reason and intuition. You say “sometimes” we prefer one, sometimes the other. So there must be a higher principle that decides when to apply one, when the other. Is that higher principle reason, or intuition, or something else again?
I concede to you that saya milk is a little like liquid cardboard to the taste!
And Schopenhauer says that perception ( which manifests itself as intuition) is pure knowledge which preceeds reason. I’m with Schopenhauer ( usually am) , although this Condillac fella sounds interesting - will look him up thanks !
Good stuff, Jean. Playing Singer’s advocate, why do you think the following: ‘If you put an atom of pain inside a whole that’s more creative, self-expressive, thoughtful, moral, etc., I suspect all that other stuff makes it matter more. ‘?
If you go along with Singer’s take on the equality of interests (and maybe you don’t) , then you get stuck with the thought that our concern for others ought not depend on what abilities they possess. It’s on the basis of his interpretation of that thought that we ought not discriminate because of race or sex, or treat stupid people badly. The fact that animals are not creative or self-expressive or thoughtful, etc, does not mean that we can disregard their interests. What matters is that they can feel pain.
The rub, maybe, has to do with how we sift through ‘matters’. Their interests alone are what matters if we are considering general questions about their morally acceptable treatment. (Not, maybe, the abilities you list.) The fact that they aren’t self-expressive matters if we’re looking for someone to take part in an opinion poll.
This is a bit new to me. Do I have Singer wrong?
Seems to me the nub of it is related to the question - Why do we care for others? As in for example, and in the context of this discussion, care that they are in pain and would wish to save them, perhaps above another fellow human being or animal.
Here’s what I can come up with:
Because we like them
Because we love them
Because they are blood relations and we feel and familial connection or loyalty to them
Because they can harm us and we wish to avoid this
Because they can help us and we wish to attract this
Granted, the above could be said to be true of some people’s relationship to their pets, or even animals in general. But most people in the world feel this way mostly about other Human beings than they do about animals. That this is a fact I believe cannot be denied.
Now applying to this to equality of concern for animals and humans, it’s clear to me that there naturally exist more humans who care about other humans above animals, than humans who care about animals equally or even above other humans.
Therefore in conclusion, what Singer is asking is for Humans both unreasonable and impractical, regardless of how rational and logic he can make it sound as he twists it into a ethics of equality between animals and Human beings.
Another point: I wonder if our opinions are influenced by the fact that the animals we eat tend to be herbivore, except tuna.
There are saltwater crocodile farms in Australia for example (crocodile skin shoes), but you don’t hear people talking about “crocodile rights”.
Singer doesn’t address the situation of crocodile’s having the right to eat people. I guess it wouldn’t show his case in a strong light.
Animal Liberation! That was it. In the earlier discussion (Threshold Chickens), I called it Animal Rights. How things shift about with age!
Anyway, regarding equality. It’s interesting. If an animal is suffering great pain, and there is nothing else we can do, we ease it gently out of life. But if a human being is suffering great pain, and there is nothing we can do, we say that the suffering is valuable, something that is of ethical and spiritual importance.
I don’t think Singer would take this point of view. But it does bring up questions of equality, for sure. And no, I don’t want to get into an argument about assisted dying. I simply take it for granted that it is the right thing to do, for those who wish to make that decision for themselves, whether by means of advanced directives, or, if still conscious, they can make their own decisions.
On the other side, however, I share Jean’s scepticism. A human being and a dog lying side by side in triage. Well, the human being goes first, and then, if we have time, the dog. But we should relieve the animal’s pain, if we can.
So far as equality of interests between human beings and animals, normally human beings’ interests are more extensive and more complex. Almost always, I should have thought, because they have long range plans, and intend to carry them out, their lives have a narrative structure. That makes a big difference, I should think, to their rights. We’re not only talking about pain and pleasure here.
Just to add another point. I know watching children suffer is pathetic. But I’ve often thought how much more terrible the suffering of adults can be, because they have fully formed lives, and it’s that that contributes an enormous amoung to suffering. There is simply no basis for equality here, especially when animals are weighed in the balance. Sure, animal interests may have to be taken into consideration, but the interests of human beings are so much more extensive and detailed, and therefore their sufferings can be worse, far worse.
Hollo by name Hollo by nature Peter.
I bow to your superior argument skillz.
Richard, your response seemed to basically ignore Jean’s laying out of the Singerian position, and simply be making an offensively ad hominem attack on Singer (raised by chimps? WTF?) because he suggests some ethical positions which are counter-intuitive to you.
I don’t feel that Singer does a good job of defending himself from his critics, and while I’m sympathetic to a lot of his arguments, I’m neither a utilitarian nor a vegetarian myself. However, it did seem like your (yes, typotastic) response was adding nothing, except inasmuch as it’s a charmingly directly-expressed example of the anti-Singer.
It’s unfortunate because I think many of Singer’s points ought to be thought-provoking. You may well disagree with the extreme nature thereof, but you have to ask yourself why.
In that regard, I have no problem with your 10:45am comment, although I’m not sure I accept the categorical statements therein. Maybe that’s the point: Singer rejects, through particular lines of reasoning, some of those “facts” you hold as undeniable. So therefore, you say, “don’t take him seriously! My circle of friends don’t.” Good for them - quite a few people do though, so maybe he’s more than just a deranged child of abusive chimps… who apparently takes reason too far, despite the monkey business.
Is a Schopenhauer fan going to get much out of Singer? I doubt there’d be much of a dialogue there. Is there a point to commenting on a post about him, then, especially if it’s to exhort the author to drop the topic?
Anyway, it’s late in Oz and I haven’t done philosophy for some time, but there you go. The comment rubbed me the wrong way for the reasons above, but so be it.
I think Singer does admit some of this stuff in Practical Ethics. He does say, doesn’t he, that a rat dying in a lab and a human dying in a hospital, even if they’re dying of the same illness, probably do not suffer equally. Sometimes the difference has to do with better memory, anticipation, knowledge of what’s happening, and all that makes things worse for the person. Although maybe things are sometimes worse for the rat, particularly if it’s more frightened because it doesn’t know what’s going on vs a person who accepts death calmly.
The point is that we should start by thinking that their interests matter equally and then continue carefully, rather than just assume that there’s no chance that the rat’s in worse shape or that the rat’s interests always get trumped, just because it’s a rat and not a human.
Peter - fair points made, good post - apologies if I came over a litte too cynical. Singer irks me - can’t help it !
I cannot get past Jean’s concerns either. The majority of animals on this planet are ants. Ants have quite a few preferences including eating all my sandwiches and having babies behind my refrigerator.
I really do my best not to step on them, but when push comes to shove, and I have to choose between just my single preference for sweet, sweet sandwiches and the thousands and thousands of little ant preferences. I do not choose to maximize the preferences of my little ant friends and their babies. I choose to call an exterminator.
The exterminator uses poisons that may cause untold suffering in the tiny little stomachs of these worthy creatures before they finally go to their reward (that blessed picnic in the sky). I didn’t do this because I fear bites or disease, I did it because I don’t like picking little ant bits out of my teeth after having lunch. Have I done something wrong? Ants are full of protein after all…
M, I think Singer backs off the further down the food chain you go — and I don’t know what to think about ants and whether or not they suffer. But let’s get all cuddly and imagine plenty of puppies frolicking in your sandwiches. You wouldn’t gas your puppies, would you? You’d do what everyone does when lots of puppies turn up (usually due to a family pet falling pregnant): you’d find them good homes. Singer’s stuff is not all that far out. He’s not saying you should become a Jain, is he?
In the light of Jean’s commentary the line ‘all animals are equal’ comes across as mere rhetoric. If we can say that more regard should be paid to the death of one animal over another simply because of the difference in species we are saying that those animals are not equal in the most important matters.
James,
You ask–
Well, because of the Painons! I’m wondering what you think about them.
Oh, and bravo Sean. I recently read “Animal Farm” and understood the title of Singer’s chapter for the first time. Duh! I’d missed the allusion for more years than I care to admit.
John - “If we can say that more regard should be paid to the death of one animal over another simply because of the difference in species…”
No, it’s because of the difference in the individuals. Fido lacks plans and preferences about the shape of his future life. This is a fact about him as an individual, not simply about his species. (We can imagine a super-intelligent dog, cognitively indistinguishable from a human, who would deserve to be treated more like us than like Fido.)
Jean - “If you put an atom of pain inside a whole that’s more creative, self-expressive, thoughtful, moral, etc., I suspect all that other stuff makes it matter more.”
This principle also holds within a species, I take it?
Consider factoring in allegiances, who and what is left behind, how much vacancy is felt by how many for how long. The deaths of animals with long time partners cause visible mourning. Of course the loss of pets does also. The unacceptable aspect of this consideration is that it suggests people with fewer connections or those more easily replaced at work have less value and would not fare well in triage decisions. Are you less valuable because you leave behind only two children rather than eight?
But when a little push comes to a bruising shove, all these questions seem to me to be only slightly more sophisticated than your high school social studies dilemma of who you’d choose in your life boat. Did Sophie make the right choice? Does it ever ever happen when confronted with the need to save one and not the other that you pause, lean back, light your cigar, and take out your thinking scales to weigh the grams of virtue represented by the three drowning creatures shouting Help!
Funny, I began this note thinking one way and managed to turn my head completely around by the time I finished. So much for personal convictions.
Re the ants and sandwich dilemma: I often have bees come and share my lunch on the deck. For the sake of peace I put a bit of my salad away from mine so the bee can have its own little lunch. Could you make a sandwich more delectable to ants than the one you made for yourself and you’ll all be happy?
Hard to say, JK. I think Singer’s line would be that we cannot disregard the interests of the painons or exploit them in various ways. Insofar as we can compare their suffering to ours, their suffering has to be taken into account. The moral line gets drawn on the basis of that fact, their capacity to suffer (the fact that they have interests) not the fact that they’re just fish or can’t talk or think or worry or hope like we do. All those abilities don’t matter for inclusion in the moral community.
BUT, all those facts might matter when we think about what to do with aspirin. If we only have enough aspirin for me or the painon, and my headache is much worse because of my reflective capacities, memory and whatnot, then I get the aspirin. But if, say, I’ve been hit in the head with a shovel and I’ve lost all of that and just have the headaches, then I’m on a par with the painon and you can flip a coin to decide who gets the pain relief. Maybe the headache doesn’t bother me much because of my reflective attitudes (I’m used to them or know that my pain could be much worse) but it’s a blight on the life of the painon. Maybe the little fishy thing gets the drugs then too.
The dying rat and the dying person bit above makes the point a little more clearly. The point again is that we should start by thinking that animal and human interests matter equally and then continue carefully, rather than just assume that there’s no chance that the animal (even a painon) in worse shape or that the animal’s interests always get trumped, just because it’s an animal, not a human
I think. Again, I’m new to this, so please do say if I’ve got Singer wrong.
“This principle also holds within a species, I take it?”
Yes. This will make anyone familiar with this literature start itching to talk about marginal cases (people with much-reduced capacities), but I would like to resist that impulse for a moment. I find the Painons compelling. If their pains matter less…well, so be it, and then we can think about people who have pains that matter less, and how we should treat them.
James,
I think you’ve got Singer right, but there’s something weird about the whole pattern of thought. Intuitively, I care about whole people, whole cats, whole squirrels. But Singer wants me to get over that and care about interests. The only thing that matters is to locate unsatisfied interests, and satisfy them. First priority goes to the more serious interest, period.
If that happens to be the interest of a boring worthless Painon, it matters not. Must get their headaches cured! The weirdness comes out when you consider that Singer can’t mind it if you drain the lake and kill them all. Their lives really have minimal value. All the same, their headaches are a big deal.
Now, you’re right there are things you can say to get things to come out a little more intuitively. You can say that humans do tend to have more serious interests than animals. Their interests tend to be compound. I want to get over my headache so I can write my wonderful novel, while a Painon just wants an end to the headache. Taking all that into account, Singer-ish thinking allows us to make some of the distinctions that seem intuitive.
But as you say, there are imaginable cases where the interest in pain relief is identical in a human and an animal. (And Singer stresses this, in AL.) I can’t get myself to think that other facts about the two have no relevance to the level of concern I ought to feel.
It would be speciesist to be dismissive–it’s just a Painon, it’s just a dog, etc. But to look at the animal “in toto” seems reasonable, not speciesist. Low concern for Painons seems reasonable, and not biased. It seems…
Oh, and by the way–the reason I’m giving for graduated concern have nothing to do with allegiances. It’s not out of loyalty to humans or what not that I should care about human headaches more than Painon headaches. What I’m claiming is that the Painon headaches simply matter little…basically because they matter little..
“No, it’s because of the difference in the individuals. Fido lacks plans and preferences about the shape of his future life. This is a fact about him as an individual, not simply about his species.”
It is a fact about his species. If individual dogs varied on this we would have no basis for deciding to let poor Fido go. We sacrificice him because we believe that as a member of the dog species his preferences should not count as highly as the human animals.
“(We can imagine a super-intelligent dog, cognitively indistinguishable from a human, who would deserve to be treated more like us than like Fido.)”
Yes, but this would be a new species, surely, a dramatically new animal. The old Fido-era dogs would still just be dogs and to that degree not our equals.
I just head Singer talk on this very subject nigh 12 hours ago.
First I think you have the thought experiment slightly off. If it was a choice between a dog and a human, I have to take the fact they experience pain equally, but that doesn’t mean that I have to wonder with serious thought whether or not to save the dog or human. I save the human under normal circumstances. The reason is because humans have a greater capacity for reason, and thus greater capacities for pain (we can reflect upon it and envision what we lose in the future and such). Singer’s example in Animal Liberation I believe is an Ancephalic baby, one who has only a brain stem and nothing else, and a dog. In that case we save the dog.
Singer also says that his argument applies more strongly (or is more justified) the more rational or the more conscious an animal becomes. Clams and Oysters have very little if any consciousness, so what he says about animal equality is only weakly justified for them, and I would imagine your painon.
Yes their lives have minimal value, but that doesn’t mean that others don’t outweigh it, and so if a painon has a headache, ok we should take it into consideration, but that easily gets outweighed by chickens in battery cages.
Wayne, I thought I’d mentioned Singer says to save the dog’s life. I think I did…
The puzzle is not about painons vs. chickens, it’s about painons vs. people with exactly the same interest in pain relief.
Singer now has got me confused. Speciesism, according to the heading, is the bias that animals don’t matter at all. Actually, very few people think that animals don’t matter at all, even though they eat them. There are laws against cruelty to animals in most developed countries, and most people are horrified by somone abusing an animal. People flock to Hollywood movies like “Free Willy”, which
defend animals. Now, Singer also admits that while all animals are equal, some animals are more equal than others, according to the heading; that is, a human life takes priority over that of a rat. So, as far as I can see, besides nobly denouncing practices like factory-farming (which others have denounced) and calling for a vegetarian lifestyle, Singer’s animal liberation does not say much that is new.
James,
I was under the impression that Singer did not get into the matter of consciousness. Looking at Wayne’s post, it’s clear that he does. That being the case, I think that he has a difficult job ahead of him.
How much weight are we to give to various animals? How do we estimate their level of consciousness in order to gauge their moral weight? Are we then justified in breeding programs that produce generation after generation of ever stupider animals?
Environmental concerns aside, if we can produce cows with the intelligence of clams, can we then treat them any way we wish? Indeed, how much smarter than a clam are cows now? How much less conscious than dogs?
I would also add that if you’re going to make an argument for animal rights, do not choose puppies. The debate over animal ethics is not well served by an appeal to the cuteness or socialized nature of animals.
Presumably we’re also talking about the rights of unpleasant, unsocial animals as well. Besides, it doesn’t do much good to go after our intuitions when our intuitions say that cows taste good (some Vietnamese and Koreans would say that puppies taste good as well).
Amos, I think Snger does say something new, because most of us care about animals very unevenly. We care about them inordinately when they’re Willy or Fido or the like, but very little when they’re destined to become a hamburger or used to test the safety of oven cleaner. Those animals are “just animals” to most people. I think it really is something new to take each and every one seriously.
And by the way–I’m all for taking them seriously. It just may not be right to have an exact metric where interest X matters exactly to the same degree, whatever the further facts about the individual who has it.
I should also quickly add, that if an animal’s moral weight is determined by level of consciousness, then it is not true that “All Animals Are Equal”.
It is for this reason that I made the example of ants. Ants are animals. Indeed, they are probably the most important animals on the planet. They are not low on the pecking order as they naturally have few if any predators.
Maybe Singer has clarified his statement somewhere. I’d be interested if someone has read anything to this effect.
M. Harris,
“All Animals are Equal” doesn’t mean exactly what you might think (Singer explains in chapter 1 of Animal Liberation). I summarize what it does mean in the post.
As I say, it means giving equal consideration to equal interests. Interests are mental states–they are desires, basically. Singer says sentience is the “cut off.” If ants aren’t sentient, they don’t have desires or interests. They’re not, then, covered by his notion of equality.
Jean: My sense is that animals matter to most people, and most people simply go into denial about factory-farming or laboratory testing of animals. I even suspect that people’s need to deny factory-farming is stronger than their need to deny, say, Darfur, because animals awake more compassion in the average person than a starving African or an Iraqi child killed as a result of collateral damage or whatever the term is. Beat a dog on the street and people will intervene. If someone beats his wife, people will walk by, saying to themselves that a fight between a couple is a private affair.
amos- You have to remember that Animal Liberation is probably THE reason why we have this prevailing attitude that animals matter in some respect. The prevailing attitude before Animal Liberation was quite different. It is almost 30 years old now I think.
Jean- You did say that we should save the dog, but my point was how you characterized it as a generic human versus a dog… The generic human would win out over a dog, only a mentally disabled human would not be chosen over the dog. We have to take the consciousness of the two things into consideration.
M Harris asks-
The weight varies with consciousness.
I think we can make reasonable estimations without having to make perfect measurements. We make reasonable estimations about other people’s levels of consciousness and pain that they are feeling. (This is almost exactly what Singer said last night).
We are probably not justified in breeding animals to make them stupider. But thats just a guess as to how Singer would respond.
If we could do that with a cow, then it would probably be morally permissible to eat the cow, whether it was right to do that in the first place, again, I’m not sure. In “The Way We Eat” Singer writes that he has a hard time justifying not eating clams and oysters, but likes to give them the benefit of the doubt.
I think you mean how much smarter are cows compared to clams now. And that would be a significant amount, since as far as I know clams don’t have brains.
How much less conscious than dogs? Probably not much less. And thats the point.
A lot of those questions are aimed at getting a high degree of precision, and while precision is most definitely valuable in rocket science, it can’t be applied in the same way to most ethical problems.
Er, I wrote–
All the qualifications are leaving room for the fact that he’d have you save the dog if the human were extremely disabled and had even less to live for. What matters is which option will maximize interest satisfaction. Normally, saving the human.
@ Richard
“You’re assumig gI haven’t read Singer. Why? Because if I had I would agree with what he says?”
It’s probably because your last paragraph in your first post bears no resemblance to Singer’s philosophy at all. You don’t have to agree with what he says to understand it.
I don’t agree with Singer on everything (and am moving away from some of his views more and more as time goes on), but I read Practical Ethics when I was about 17 and although it’s one of his more academic books it is still very readable and accessible for the most part (astonishingly so by the standards of most modern philosophy). A lot of what he says has stayed with me, I’m still a pretty unrepentant consequentialist.
Wayne:
Anacephalic children, disabled children, retarded children; what was that slogan “life not worth life”, I forget the German for it. Certainly they are worth less than an Alsatian (German Shepard) dog in its prime. We are inclined to think that academics are harmless, their teeth drawn. Let them gnash their gums in their ivory towers. Give John Yoo a chair. Why not?
But do people like Singer enable extreme policies by putting human being, albeit anacephalic, in one pan of the scales and animal being in the other.
The conceit involved in making these shocking decisions about the right to live - - or at least who deserves rescue is truly mind boggling. It’s like Reality TV. Three philosophers straight out of the American Idol program will watch the entertaining displays of IQ to see if you measure up to win the longevity prize.
I have never found an association between a person’s apparent mental acuity and their day job. I’ve hired plumbers whose minds seemed to me far more agile and their abilities to deduce whatever decidedly superior to others who profess for a living. For anyone to assume they have the knowledge or insight to weigh the worth of anyone else is supercilious and frankly quite dumb as well as dangerous. As michael reidy points out, there is historic precedent for this style of thinking.
Wayne: I’ve been around a lot longer than 30 years, and where I live, few people read Singer, but as long as I recall, people have shown more compassion for animals, for example, stray dogs and pigeons, than they do for the homeless. Stray dogs get fat on what people feed them. Now there is this disconnection between the daily love for animals and the fact that people are willing to let their meat be factory-farmed under horrible conditions, but people just block out where their meat comes from or pretend that their meat was manufactured by the supermarket. I insist that the average person has more compassion for animals than he does for people who are not family members or not of his perceived tribe (e.g., the Jews support Israel, the Arabs support Palestine). When Hollywood runs out of ideas, which often occurs, they make a movie about a cruel farmer and some poor animals, and people shed buckets of tears, but Hollywood is too smart to make a movie about kids in Africa who die for lack of money to buy medicines for malaria or HIV. No one would go to that movie. No box office. No one cares. Or very few people care.
rtk, Oh c’mon. People do in fact make all sorts of decisions where they have to give higher priority to one life than another, one individual pain’s over another…There’s no avoiding it. So why not give these things some thought well ahead of time? You can do so and still admit that in real life, decision making is always much more messy. Thinking is good. (That’s my thought for the day.)
Michael–Give John Yoo a chair…yeah, that’s one of the weirder facts of modern life.
JK: let’s hear it for Messy and down with Thinking. A quick decision with all our feelers out seems to me much more trustworthy than a methodical evaluation of people’s worth. Encephalic babies versus Collies, indeed.
Thomas Mann was quoted way up in this thread as having said in Buddenbrooks that reason is …ummm, I forget what …. not the path to truth…something like that. I’ve read that wonderful book twice as well as all of Mann’s other books. His characters in The Magic Mountain, Hans Castorp and Herr Settembrini, would have very much enjoyed this blog.
Jean,
Does Singer use an either/or definition of consciousness or a scale of more to less? If he uses a strict dichotomy, then where do we draw the line among animal species? Clearly not at “self consciousness”. If he uses a spectrum of consciousness, then why are ants not included?
What is the particular fascination for Singerthought? Intellectuals are just as prone to fads as the masses. I asked my old lecturer when I met him years ago - What’s the latest thing?
- Lacan, he replied. Now it’s Zizek probably or Singer.
John Carey’s ‘The Intellectuals and the Masses’ is a good read if you haven’t come across it already. There is a particularly chilling account of D.H. Lawrence’s prevision of the death camps and his enthusiastic espousal of the final solution for all untermenschen.
M, I think as far as sentience goes for SInger it’s probably either/or. Either you can feel pain (e.g.) or you can’t. Of course, knowing the answer for any particular species is tricky. What does have a more-or-less nature are interests. In some species it’s normal to have just a few, whereas in others there are a lot. People have lots and lots…since basically interests are desires.
Michael– I am a big Singer fan because the things that interest him also interest me. I like the way he struggles with what’s happening in the world, rather than being utterly lost in some academic maze. He’s a very clear thinker and he’s also my model of a good philosophical writer. He’s lucid, engaging, and a great disrespecter of disciplinary boundaries. I like the fact that he aims to speak to the public (in books, magazines, speeches, etc) instead of just to the inner circle of philosophers. Also, he’s not just a philosopher but an activist–another point in his favor, to my mind. Despite all that, I’m not a disciple…for example, I can’t bring myself to sign on for act utilitarianism. But anyhow.
Wayne,
Really?
Why not?
You seem to be advocating that we can just sort of feel our way through things making quick estimations as to how conscious animals really are: A human is about 100(?) times more conscious than a chicken (or has that many more significant preferences) therefore its life/preferences are worth that of about 100 chickens. Or is it a million? Or maybe like Jean says, it modified by human sensitivities and equals… what, a billion chickens? Is this an adequately reasonable estimation?
I’ll grant you that this is how we sometimes decide things, but is this the best we can do? If we must settle for imprecise ethics and our basic intuitions are good enough, why bother to discuss philosophy of ethics at all? Perhaps you feel that in philosophy we are somehow merely involved in helping to inform one another’s intuitions. If so, then we still need information and the more precise the better.
I’ll also grant you that a cow is more aware than a clam (though the fact that the clam has no brain does not mean it is completely unaware, no joke). I have more trouble, however, with deciding the difference between my ants and modern domestic cattle (dogs and pre-domesticated cattle really are a very different story). Still, let’s give cattle the benefit of the doubt and take the easier case of modern domestic chickens instead.
Besides slightly more complicated means of rearing young and the unconscious control of more complex anatomies, I cannot think of many activities that domestic chickens can manage that are much beyond the abilities of the admittedly very tiny ant. Can you think of any?
Chicken’s responses may be more focused on more complicated visual data rather than olfactory, but I don’t see much else to argue in favor of their possessing some distinct form of “sentience” that ants do not possess. Both, for example, display behaviors indicative of distress when injured, and indeed, both will go on demonstrating such behaviors even without the benefit of a head.
If we are to do more than merely let well enough alone and simply trust our intuitions, do we need better science of consciousness or do we need a better theory of ethics altogether?
Jean,
I think I initially agreed with you that “less sophisticated animals” like ants and painons and their attending preferences are less morally significant. James and Wayne seem to think that Singer agrees with this. You say that he has a cut-off. It seems probable that in some way he employs both. Regardless, I think that both methods spell problems for his theory.
Yes, it is tricky. And?
The bar for determining sentience use to separate humans from animals. Modern research, however, has shown that higher vertebrates also demonstrate self-aware behaviors.
Chimps for example upon seeing themselves in a mirror will remove a red dot put on their nose. Most primates do not do this but instead believe the image in the mirror to be another animal. They are aware, but not self-aware.
That being said, human infants also do not demonstrate self-aware responses until their second year of development. Since exclusion of infants and most animals from ethical consideration is unacceptable to most of us, it is difficult to use self-awareness as a definitive criterion for distinction.
I do not at all understand the distinction of sentience proposed by Singer if it is a cut-off. You seem to imply that he means either the ability to register pain or the ability to appreciate pain. Registering pain seems to imply base awareness. Appreciating pain may be indicative of self-awareness. Thus:
If the bar is simply the presence of any awareness, then it seems we must include the preferences of ants and painons in our ethical considerations and my earlier arguments apply. Ants display behaviors of distress when injured so we have no reason to doubt that they do not register pain on some level.
If the bar is some minimum threshold of awareness, what kind of emergent behavior is indicative of having crossed this threshold? The animal should look sad when injured? How do we discount animals that just happen to be small?
If self-awareness is the bar for ethical consideration, then how could he consider most animals to be self-aware?
If the bar is neither awareness nor self-awareness, then what else could we possibly be talking about??
I don’t think they said that., exactly. Singer’s view is straightforward. It has two important parts–
(1) He says whenever there’s the exact same preference in human X and animal Y, those preferences deserve the same consideration. Thus, X and Y are equals. That, and only that is the meaning of “equality.”
(2) But then, he also says that in point of fact there are many differences between humans and animals. That doesn’t stop them from being equals in the above sense. But it does affect what we’re actually required to do on behalf of animals. So in my triage example, Singer would say the dog and human must get the same consideration for their exactly equal pains, but there may be many further interests in the human. Perhaps the human wants a cell phone to call his relatives and tell them he’s OK. The dog doesn’t have that interest. Furthermore, if both are at risk of dying, the dog doesn’t have the same interest in surviving that the human does. (Assuming, by the way, they are both typical of their species.)
If you look at (1) alone, Singer’s view is very counterintuitive. Why should a squirrel’s pain elicit the same response from me as my daughter’s? But then you have to add (2). In point of fact, Singer thinks I’m justified in paying much more attention to my daughter, since she has tons of interests and the squirrel has just a few. So the view is not wildly counterintuitive.
Still, even seeing that (2) helps, I’m not satisfied. I think (1) really is counterintuitive, even if you add (2). The like interests of a very complex being and a very primitive being don’t strike me as deserving identical consideration. Same atom, different whole…the whole make a difference to how the atoms should be treated. The Painons are supposed to show this.
I’ve been following this conversation in a pretty desultory way (that is, I read the few things that seem to be on offer when I open it up), and therefore my opinions may not count for much. However, taken Jean’s last post and an earlier post about the preferences of ants over the picnicker for his sandwich, the first principle:
is not only counterintuitive; it’s wrong. If I have a piece of cake, and my dog (well, I don’t have a dog at the moment, but anyway) wants it too, I’m not going to be disposed to give him the cake, or even part of it. It’s mind. His kibbles are in the corner in his dish. But there’s nothing in (2) in Jean’s post that would lead to this conclusion.
So, am I just selfish? I want the cake, my dog wants it. Shouldn’t I at least give him half? No, it’s mine. He’s got his own food, and he doesn’t have a right to mine. I decide what he eats. And besides, kibbles are better for him. His teeth won’t rot so quickly for one thing.
But it’s not only because I’m more complex. My desire for the cake is probably no more complex, other things being equal, than my dog’s. We both like the taste, the texture, just scent of chocolate, the undefinable softness of the butter icing. But it’s still my piece of cake. ‘Go eat your kibbles, for Christ’s sake and leave me enjoy my cake in peace. And stop those pathetic little whinings and shifting from foot to foot.’
Jean,
You seem to be saying:
1) Singer says we should give moral consideration to preferences not individuals. Humans have more preferences, so they tend to get correspondingly greater moral consideration.
2) You disagree. You believe that beings deserve moral consideration in proportion to their sophistication or at least only in the presence of a minimum threshold of sophistication, not due to their number of preferences.
You seem to be saying that I somehow missed these points. If so, then you need to read my post again.
This leaves me with my original question: does Singer argue that ants have preferences worthy of moral consideration?
If he says that they do not, then why? I give some possible alternatives in my previous post.
If he does grant them morally significant preferences, then am I wrong to call the exterminator when it’s the difference between a million ants’ preference for a sandwich and my own? Perhaps my own preference for clean sandwiches is part of a larger network of related preferences that outweighs the million others? You mentioned that Singer would have no problem with draining the lake on your painons. Is this your answer?
I think we just don’t know if ants have interests.
If not, Singer would say the are not our equals. They don’t have interests like ours that we should give like consideration.
If so, they are equals on his view, but they probably have few preferences. We shouldn’t cause them gratuitous pain. We should use pesticides that kill them fast, if they are interfering with out basic interests. It is the same stuff he’d say about other “pests” like rats.
I’d call all that not at all crazy, even if I’m not on board with the basic idea that like interests always deserve the very same consideration.
Eric, Yes, but you could say the same thing about sharing the cake with a homeless person sitting next to you on a park bench. “It’s mine” has some oomph, but it doesn’t really address the issue whether animals have the same moral status as human beings.
Eric: The only difference between your approach to fighting for your piece of cake is that it seems you only talk to yourself. I say your very words to the dog. Not only do I explain MINE to the dog, but even the ants (listen up, M Harris). I don’t step on them because I know ants have multiple interests with serious benefits for all that have been described clearly in nature films. I gather them gently on a newspaper or something and I escort them outside while explaining the concept of mi casa su casa to the little immigrants.
True Story: It happened last night, after I turned off the light and had a final sip of a small glass of brandy. I thought the tasty little crunch was a piece of I don’t know what, quite liked the texture until I realized what it was. A drunken ant. I’m serious. It actually tasted good until I spit it out loudly. Sometimes knowledge ruins everything.
JK: pesticides? I’ll pretend I didn’t read that.
Jean: your example of sharing one’s cake with a homeless man convinces me that I’m a reactionary, rightwing speicisist (I can’t even learn to spell the word), because I’d be ashamed to eat a cake in front of a hungry man without giving him a piece, while I certainly would not share my cake with an animal, unless perhaps it was a pet and I don’t have pets.
I am nice to ants. I also don’t squash if I don’t have to. No pesticides, unless absolutely necessary. We had termites a while back and decided we had to frustrate their interest in eating our house. We needed to live in it.
I’m not sure I really do any of that (to be honest) out of regard for insect interests. It’s hard to explain.
Gotta get some work done!!!
Reactionary, right-wing speciesist….no, tell me it isn’t true! (And what if it was a very thirsty dog and it was a hot day?)
OK, I really do have to get some work done.
Jean: See how we work on the level of symbols, not of calculations. Of course, I’d offer water to a thirsty dog (or person), but cake has another symbolic weight, since eating cake is a luxury and I’d feel ashamed to eat something special in front of a homeless person, whether or not he or she was starving, because homeless people rarely eat good chocolate cake. I would imagine his envy, and envy makes me uncomfortable. Now, if I was eating, say, a piece of bread and the homeless man looked well-fed, I might not offer him anything. Nothing is as simple as Singer tries to frame it.
M said-
Heh… clearly I don’t believe that we should follow out intuitions. You’re trying to force precision onto something that just can’t handle it. The speed limit in America is the posted speed limit, or whatever is safe for conditions. “Safe for conditions” is incredibly vague, and that means police can give people tickets for traveling below the posted speed limit. It’s not going to help to complain to the judge that they can’t precisely define the speed that would be safe for conditions, because its a vague notion.
Similarly, our ability to determine consciousness is vague, but that doesn’t mean suddenly I’m an intuitionist about ethics. I’m pretty clearly an annoyingly hard headed utilitarian about ethics most of the time.
It’s not that I’m not open to more precision in consciousness, I just don’t think you’re going to get it. But if you think that the lack of definite lines of distinction between levels of consciousness between animals should stop us from making what I think are reasonable judgments that some animals are more conscious than others, then you’re right, we might as well throw virtually all morality out the window and just feel our way through the world. Thats clearly wrong.
Jean,
This may be the best we can do, but I wonder if it is a slippery slope. Catholics want to say that fish are insufficiently sophisticated to be worthy of (much) moral consideration. Others want to say that chickens’ brains are small enough that we shouldn’t worry about them too much.
My point is that this is not a throwaway question. We can choose to suspend judgment, but we are obligated to still try and get better answers. I chose ants because they are an extreme example. So what then is a non-extreme example?
Wayne,
So… we don’t use our intuitions to determine consciousness, we can’t expect more precision, and yet it is still morally significant that we make good judgments. Sorry, how are these judgments suppose to become “reasonable”?
“Safe for conditions” relies on our intuitions informed by experience of driving in different condition. The key word is “informed”. Without information in some form or other, there is nothing to really go on. We have no experience of other creatures’ consciousness, so all we have is our intuitions and what we can logically deduce from good information.
If you are pessimistic about the possibility of more information about other creatures’ level of consciousness, then fine. I didn’t say that the inability to distinguish levels of conscious means we shouldn’t try. I said that if we get it wrong, then according to utilitarianism we will inevitably commit immoral acts.
Sorry folks, but if there are ants in my kitchen, I’ll spray ‘em, every single one. No moral qualms at all.
True enough, but I don’t experience your consciousness either. So am I to assume you have none? I think I can be reasonable in saying you do have consciousness through your behavior. I don’t want to be labeled a behaviorist here, but I think behavior is some evidence for consciousness, and the more complex your behavior is, the more consciousness you have. Physiology, I think is another factor that can help us determine consciousness. So where ants may have complex behavior (which may actually not be all that complex, but have an illusion of complexity from the aggregate effect of simple actions being multiplied by the number of ants in the colony) they don’t have the complex physiology that would lend itself to a complex consciousness either.
Insects minds are really interesting…I’m not sure what to think. Now that I think of it, I wrote something about them way back when.
http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=105
I’m still trying to understand why I don’t like Singer. Here are two reasons: he’s a puritan and he’s utopian. Utopian means he proposes a system of ethics that just will not work because it has little to do with the way that people really make ethical judgments. It’s like Communism: the idea of a classless society where everyone shares the wealth sounds great in a book, but in practice it was a disaster. It’s dangerous to take our moral principles out of a book, especially books which are so counter-intuitive as those of Singer or those which
propose a society where people share the wealth.
Jean, I recall an article you wrote about thinking about using your money as Singer proposes and then buying a TV set. That’s the way we all are.
Ethics should start from the fact that 99.99% of humanity will buy a TV set or a computer instead of giving the same sum to Oxfam. Ethics should start from the fact that 99.99% of humanity will eat the chocolate cake instead of sharing it with ants.
Despite my doubts I have a great fondness for Singer’s books, and it may just have to do with his way of making questions compelling, thinking and writing clearly, using “real world” information engagingly. In short, if you haven’t read him (have you?) maybe you shouldn’t make up your mind yet! The first thing I ever read was Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Great article, even though I am not a disciple. Will add link.
Wayne,
Please read my post again. Two times I have said that the inability to distinguish levels of conscious doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, but if we get it wrong, then according to utilitarianism we will inevitably commit immoral acts.
This is a common objection to utilitarianism in general… Its the problem of predicting the future, we can’t do it. Yes… we may get it wrong, but we must resign ourselves that we did the best we could with the best information that we could. Clearly in any situation in which an agent lacks information, and makes an incorrect decision based on it, would not be an immoral person. Netiher would it be for a utilitarian, but the utilitarian can judge whether or not the act was the right act in an objective sense from hindsight.
Just like in traditional utilitarianism, its not a matter of the number of people’s whos preferences are satisfied, but rather overall preferences. The preferences of the slaves outweigh the preferences of the slave owners.
Utilitarianism in general looks at all available options, and chooses the one that maximizes utility (whatever utility is defined as). which would maximize utility, a slave economy, or an economy where everyone is free, even if the products of the economy are slightly more expensive?
Clearly this is true. Utilitarians want to say exactly what you said. The problem is utilitarianism gives you no easy way to do so. Rule Utilitarianism partially gets around this, but it simply pushes the problem down another layer since we can’t really be sure which rules to adopt.
Utilitarians must either say that either (a) utilitarianism is just a part of the puzzle since it cannot alone give justification for not blaming bad choices based on insufficient information or (b) bite the bullet and say that we’re are imperfect and inevitably going to make mistakes.
Why? Not just the slave owners depended on the slaves. The entire economy depended upon it. When the slaves were freed, the South went from being one of the richest sectors of the country to the absolute poorest, and this continues until this day.
Non-slaves outnumbered slaves by a significant margin, thus it can be argued that a larger percentage of preferences depended on slavery.
The price of products are not the only preferences involved. Many poor whites were economically worse off than many slaves. Their self-esteem depended on the belief that their “race” inherently made them superior. This is just one example.
I think that people will inevitably calculate the balance of preferences based on your own biases. Do you think that a Confederate Preference Utilitarian would see his ethical philosophy as a reason for condemning slavery? I doubt it.
> Utopian means he proposes a system of ethics that just will not work because it has little to do with the way that people really make ethical judgments. It’s like Communism
It isn’t a problem to propose communism it is a problem to try to enforce it via soldiers etc*. Singer as far as I know is just proposing the idea. Its a bit like how in religious buildings all around the world people describe ideal ways to live and ideal historic people.
utilitarianism offers the ability to do good and bad - so the fact you don’t live up to the ideal doesn’t mean you are net evil - the sort of morality that only has restrictions on your behavior seems to imply you can only live a neutral or evil life.
> Ethics should start from the fact that 99.99% of humanity will…
surely there is a place for both views.
> bite the bullet and say that we’re are imperfect and inevitably going to make mistakes.
thats a very very tiny bullet - it barely tickles. Maybe I’m missing something up the thread…
> Why? Not just the slave owners depended on the slaves. The entire economy depended upon it.
Utilitarianism cant create a ‘bad situation’ by definition - if you contrive a situation where leaving slavery is better (and I note you haven’t yet)0, then you can justify slavery - for example where without one slave everyone in the world will die. Utilitarianism protects us against that because abhorrent situations are so incredibly unlikely to be the best possible outcome.
> I think that people will inevitably calculate the balance of preferences based on your own biases.
In the same why that people will interpret the bible how they want or will interpret ethics in general how they want. that reminds me of Eric Schwitzgebel on if philosophers are more moral than non philosophers - the consensus being, if at all then not by much.
But, surely, this is if anything less of a problem for utilitarians than anyone else, after all utilitarians can design utilitarian systems in the ways designed to achieve utilitarian outcomes without restrictions unlike most other moral theories.
* - which is where it would probably cease to be utilitarian (or for the communism example - would cease to be communist in a power sense)
GNZ: Communism had to be imposed at gun-point, precisely because it was utopian, out of touch with human nature. Marx does not propose Communism imposed at gun-point; rather he imagines that the state will wither away. I agree with you that there is a place for utopian as well as realistic points of view.
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I think Singer is WRONG! We should not treat animals and humans equally. Say I was to walk in the jungle and stumble by a pack of lions. I would get eaten. Animals and humans are NOT the same. If I’m not allowed to get the same rights as the lions they should not get the same ones as us.
Wow, what in interesting debate. Whether you love him or hate him, his reasoning has some weight and currency in a scientifically advanced and morally sensitive society.
Extending the rights of humans to animals does not mean they are or should be considered equal or of equal value or anything like that. It means that they are considered as different yet of comparative value considering they both have certain faculties and functions as biological and sentient beings.
I think most of the antagonism towards Singer comes from socially or culturally conditioned responses to his ideas rather than scientific, sociological and psychological research into the area of human/animal relations, similarities and evolutionary connectedness.
And to Argentinafan, you are an idiot for walking into the jungle with no knowledge of it or the creatures that inhabit it.
And it makes you wonder why most people who agree with Singer even bother trying to explain his ideas to other (”rational” non-animal!) humans.