Carl Cohen and marginal cases

Anyone who wishes to include all human beings within the moral community while excluding all non-humans is faced with a problem. Whatever standard one chooses as the criterion for admission to the moral community -- rationality, moral agency, autonomy, ability to communicate, emotion, the ability to feel pain -- many humans score no higher, and some score lower, than some animals. Because of this overlap, it appears that to be logically consistent one must either exclude some humans from the moral community or else admit some non-humans. This is called the argument from marginal cases.

One response to the argument from marginal cases is what has been called the argument from species normality. This has been advanced by Tibor Machan, who says that a broken chair may not be good for sitting on, but it is still a chair and not a monkey or a palm tree. In other words, humans who are deficient in some key respect are nevertheless members of the human species and ought to be treated the same way as other members of their species. Perhaps the best-known defender of this position is Carl Cohen, in his article "The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research" and in his slugfest with Tom Regan in The Animal Rights Debate. Cohen says that while moral agency is key to membership in the moral community, this standard is not a test to be administered on an individual basis, but applies to all who are of the same kind. Humans are the kind of beings who have moral agency.

Nathan Nobis argues that Cohen's position has absurd and contradictory implications. David Graham takes issue with Tibor Machan.

Dihydrogen monoxide warning

China is running out of water.

Hard to swallow?

Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma has engendered much buzz and admiration. Pollan inquires into the origins of the food that Americans consume and suggests that a switch to a more ethical regime is in order. Now in the September issue of The Atlantic Monthly, B. R. Myers argues that for gourmets (gourmands?) like Pollan, the pleasures of the palate trump any serious moral concern for the treatment of animals.

Everything is connected

In August the military dictatorship of Burma imposed steep price increases for fuel. Students protested. Then this month thousands of Buddhist monks took to the streets, calling for democracy, and sparking mass demonstrations. Now the military, which is supported by China and Russia (oil and gas, anyone?) and has brutally suppressed opposition in the past, may crack down again. Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize winner and leader of Burma's democracy movement, has been under house arrest for many years. In Norway a small group of exiles operates the Democratic Voice of Burma website.

Klein versus Gore

Naomi Klein will be speaking at the Alix Goolden Hall at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 6. She's on tour, promoting her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Tickets, if any are left, are only $10 each from Bolen Books, and will get you $5 off the cover price of the book. That's a much better deal than $200+ per seat for Al Gore at the Conference Centre this Saturday -- even if that does include tea at the Empress.

Regan on respect and doing harm

Tom Regan's book The Case for Animal Rights is 400 pages of closely reasoned argument. A synopsis can be found in the article "The Case for Animal Rights" (see column at left). Regan argues that the criterion for having the right to be treated with respect is being the subject-of-a-life. What is that?

To be the subject-of-a-life, in the sense in which this expression will be used, involves more than merely being alive and more than merely being conscious. ...individuals are subjects-of-a-life if they have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; an emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference- and welfare-interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them, logically independently of their utility for others and logically independently of their being the object of anyone else's interests. (p. 243)

The right to be treated with respect implies the prima facie right not to be harmed by moral agents. But sometimes rights conflict and someone's right not to be harmed must be overridden. Apart from the obvious cases of acting in self-defence and punishing the guilty, Regan proposes two main principles for deciding cases of conflicting rights.

The miniride (minimize overriding) principle:

Special considerations aside, when we must choose between overriding the rights of many who are innocent or the rights of few who are innocent, and when each affected individual will be harmed in a prima facie comparable way, then we ought to choose to override the rights of the few in preference to overriding the rights of the many. (p. 305)

The worse-off principle:

Special considerations aside, when we must decide to override the rights of the many or the rights of the few who are innocent, and when the harm faced by the few would make them worse-off than any of the many would be if any other option were chosen, then we ought to override the rights of the many. (p. 308)

Go figure

Michael Vick may enjoy watching dogs fight; someone else may find that repulsive but see nothing wrong with eating an animal who has had a life as full of pain and suffering as the lives of the fighting dogs. It’s strange that we regard the latter as morally different from, and superior to, the former. How removed from the screaming crowd around the dog pit is the laughing group around the summer steak barbecue?

So asked Gary Francione in a piece on Michael Vick that attracted some attention. People's attitudes toward animals are full of inconsistencies. But is it inconsistent for a vegetarian to support vivisection (experimentation that harms animals)? Not according to the author of "Confessions of a vegetarian vivisector".

The Long Emergency

James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, argues that the end of cheap oil will soon force radical changes in our lives. The suburbs and the suburban way of life will be toast. Cities will of necessity become smaller, and will rely more on waterways and ports for the delivery of goods. The rail networks will have to be rebuilt and upgraded. Overall, however, life will become intensely local, and urban centres that do not have access to locally produced food will be in trouble. It’s madness, says Kunstler, to construct buildings more than seven stories high. With power outages likely to be fairly common, living on the 18th floor of a building will not be a good idea.

Kunstler rejects the idea that technological innovation will enable us to overcome the crisis with little disruption of our comfortable way of life. Technology ≠ Power, he says. A jumbo jet can’t be fuelled with software. (He says that the young millionaire nerds at Google headquarters to whom he talked just didn’t grasp this elementary fact.) He doesn’t believe that alternative energy sources like wind or solar power – or even nuclear power – can be adequate replacements for oil and gas. And he utterly rejects claims that the Alberta Tar Sands and its ilk can provide enough recoverable oil to significantly postpone the arrival of the Long Emergency. He says that people often ask him whether he can give them any hope, but he can’t do that. The only hope there can be is what comes from getting up off your rear end and doing something about the current state of affairs.

Here's Kunstler's acerbic commentary on Alan Greenspan and the Iraq War.

Battle at Kruger

Darwin speculated that the origin of the moral sense is to be found in feelings that humans share with other social animals, and that these feelings are naturally selected for by evolution. Creatures that sympathize with, and aid, others of their group have a better collective chance of surviving. Here's a remarkable video of buffalo coming to the aid of one of their youngsters attacked by lions.
Warning: violence and South African accents.

Meanwhile, there's a bumper potato harvest in Greenland.

Blood for oil

Alan Greenspan, recently retired chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, admits that (surprise, surprise) the Iraq War is largely about oil. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Iran seem headed for a showdown. What has all this got to do with the environment? Everything.

Suicide food

This is an example of "suicide food": a happy animal urging you to "kill me and eat me, please". As you can see from this site dedicated to suicide food, such images are quite common. I took the above photo several years ago here in Victoria, at the corner of Fort and Blanshard. The place used to be "The Cultured Cow", but is now a Starbucks (what else?). This photo (in black and white) has been used by Carol J. Adams in her book The Pornography of Meat. Adams is an ecofeminist who is interested in the way that women have culturally been linked with nature, and in particular with non-human animals. Her best known work is The Sexual Politics of Meat.

Shock Doctrine

Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, has now published The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. A short promo film for the book can be viewed at Klein's website. And The Guardian is hosting a series of extracts and reviews.

In memoriam

It is unfortunate to have to begin with the news that Alex, the African Grey parrot and well-known friend of Dr. Irene Pepperberg, has died at the age of 31. No one familiar with Alex is likely to use the term "bird brain" in the usual derogatory way.