Martha Nussbaum has an essay in the Chronicle (sorry, subscription required [update: try this link, thanks susan]) that draws on her new book Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. The essay concerns “The Moral Status of Animals”. On the one hand, she argues, “The fact that all Kantian views ground moral concern in our rational and moral capacities makes it difficult to treat animals as beings to whom justice is due.” On the other hand, utilitarianism, which does recognize the direct relevance of animal suffering, has other familiar problems, many of which have to do with aggregation. As an alternative, Nussbaum’s capability approach “starts from the notion of human dignity and a life worthy of it. But it can be extended to provide a more adequate basis for animal entitlements than the other two theories under consideration. It seems wrong to think that only human life has dignity.”
Any such account depends on distinguishing the capabilities that contribute to a flourishing life with dignity from those that are harmful to that project. As Nussbaum is well aware, we cannot “simply read off norms from the way nature actually is.” She properly emphasizes the point:
There is a danger in any theory that alludes to the characteristic flourishing and form of life of a species: the danger of romanticizing ‘Nature,’ or seeing nature as a direct source of ethical norms. Nature is not particularly ethical or good. It should not be used as a direct source of norms. In the human case, therefore, my capabilities view does not attempt to extract norms directly from some facts about human nature. We must begin by evaluating the innate powers of human beings, asking which ones are central to the notion of a life with dignity. Thus not only evaluation but also ethical evaluation is put into the approach from the start. Many things that are found in human life, like the capacities for cruelty, despair, or self-destruction, are not on the capabilities list.
I don’t know whether we “must begin” in this way, but I don’t have any real complaints with this approach when applied to humans. But I am really unsure of how to evaluate whether an animal capacity is a good one or a bad one.
Nussbaum wants to say that identifying the good animal capacities underwrites judgments about whether a particular animal life is dignified or not: “Each form of life is worthy of respect, and it is a problem of justice when a creature does not have the opportunity to unfold its (valuable) power, to flourish in its own way, and to lead a life with dignity. The fact that so many animals never get to move around, enjoy the air, exchange affection with other members of their kind — all that is a waste and a tragedy, and it is not a life in keeping with the dignity of such creatures.” I agree that it’s a bad thing when animals suffer, but I just don’t know whether dignity is what is at issue. To the extent that keeping farm animals from moving is painful, this is a bad thing. But does it help to say that in addition to being in pain, animals are deprived of the ability to exercise a good – as opposed to merely natural – capacity to move around?
Nussbaum is somewhat sensitive to the problem.
In the case of nonhuman animals, however, we need to remember that we are relatively ignorant of what a good life for each sort of animal is and strongly biased in favor of our own power interests. Thus our attempts to evaluate the capacities of animals, saying that some are good and others not so good, may easily go wrong. Moreover, while we can expect a potentially violent human (as all humans are) to learn to restrain her or his capacity for violence, we cannot expect so much learning and control from many animal species. Thus to deny a tiger the exercise of its predatory capacities may inflict significant suffering, whereas we require a human to learn to live at peace with others (or we should!).
But how do we judge at all whether a natural, animal capacity is a good one or a bad one? Yes, it’s hard, and we’re ignorant, but how can we even begin to tell? Perhaps an example will help.
Here the capabilities view may, however, distinguish two aspects of the capability in question. A tiger’s capability to kill small animals, defined as such, does not have intrinsic ethical value, and political principles can omit it (and even inhibit it in some cases). But a tiger’s capability to exercise its predatory nature so as to avoid the pain of frustration may well have value, if the pain of frustration is considerable. Zoos have learned how to make that distinction. Noticing that they were giving predatory animals insufficient exercise for their predatory capacities, they have had to face the question of the harm done to smaller animals by allowing such capabilities to be exercised. Should they give a tiger a tender gazelle to crunch on? The Bronx Zoo has found that it can give the tiger a large ball on a rope, whose resistance and weight symbolize the gazelle. The tiger seems satisfied.
I confess I don’t find this helpful. Why doesn’t the capability to kill small animals have intrinsic ethical value? I mean, I understand it doesn’t have value for the small animals, but is that reason enough? How are we supposed to assess this? And how can we tell whether giving it a ball on a rope to play with is a worthy substitute or an insult to its dignity? If it really is the pain of its frustrated predatory nature that is the problem, and the seeming satisfaction of playing with the ball that supports this solution, then perhaps the question of dignity has dropped out, after all.
But I intend all this to raise questions, not to provide a refutation. On what grounds can we identify a natural, animal capacity as either good or bad, and is it necessary to do so?
{ 39 comments }
Cryptic Ned 02.09.06 at 10:32 pm
I don’t know if the word “dignity” should be used. The animals certainly don’t want dignity.
John 02.09.06 at 11:48 pm
One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression.
Will Wilkinson 02.09.06 at 11:58 pm
I find this maddeningly arbitrary. Nussbaum insists on talking about the animal’s capabilities, as if, in these cases, we’re supposed to be tuning into is some characteristic of the animal that, in virtue of the kind of characteristic it is, exemplifies a kind of value through its realization, expression, or whatever. But predators like to rip the heads off little creature and feel the hot blood on their tongues, and, well, yuck. So what we really have here is a projection of Martha Nussbaum’s pattern of sentimental reactions, which, I guess, we are supposed to believe track some real, external properties having to do with animals’ species capacities? No doubt Nussbaum is a sentimental savant, and her feelings are fine instruments indeed, but… I’m sure I’m being uncharitable, but I’m not hopeful.
cw 02.10.06 at 12:12 am
“On what grounds can we identify a natural, animal capacity as either good or bad, and is it necessary to do so?”
I think that it might helpful to remember that all animals have evolved to live a specific type of life in a specific environment. This life includes the many drives, urges, instincts that animals feel automatically; physical characteristics evolved for certain environments; and types of food thier bodies have evolved to process. I think that in general if the animal is not permited to live the life it has evolved to live, then the animal is probably suffering, either physically or mentally. You can see this principal in humans. Humans evolved to live in groups. If you force a human to live alone, they almost always suffer. Or in polar bears. Polar bears need a cold climate. They suffer in warm weather. And cows. Cows have evolved to eat a certain kinds of food:grass. They have extra stomachs and rechew thier food several times. That’s why cows on corn diets get sick and need anti-biotics. Dried corn is not grass.
As far as moral or eithical vaules inherent in treating animals one way or the other, I think it’s all just rationalization, one way or the other. I think most people feel instictively that it is wrong to cause suffering in other creatures. I think that it is an evoloutionary feature. I mean we all feel bad about seeing a dog laying hit by the side of the road. And we would all be horrified by a feed lot or industrial chicken farm. Why we have this instict, I don’t know. Cats or sharks that see injured animals feel very differently. They get excited, they feel the need to attack.
I don’t know what this means ethically, but I do know we don’t want to know where our meat comes from.
Bro. Bartleby 02.10.06 at 1:13 am
I would say that nature is amoral, and if you consider humans as just a different or more evolved animal, then humans too are amoral, as are all living things.
Questions of right and wrong are fictions to amoral life, for only survival and comfort matters. And comfort can take various forms, for say a rabbit, being free from the eyes of a predator may be enough, for a tiger, comfort may be the excitement of sinking teeth into the neck of an antelope and tasting hot blood and anticipating the coming meal, or comfort for an amoral human may be health, wealth, good sex, and all the security and distractions that money can buy.
Morals don’t come into play unless one believes in a higher power — God. Without a belief in God, then morals are simply learned experience for keeping folks under control, and thereby keeping the comfort levels high for the greatest number of folks.
Morals kick into play when one believes in God, and then rights and wrongs have real meaning. Even if we must kill animals to survive, and it must be done day in and day out, this doesn’t lessen the importance in remembering what is actually taking place.
So to care about what one eats is to care about the pigs or the cows or the chickens or the corn plants or the stalks of wheat that were sacrificed for us to survive.
The prayer before a meal, at its center, is an acknowledgment to God that we understand that the plant or animal that we are about to consume was sacrificed on our behalf. I suppose it is all about living in the moment, especially when a feast is before us and the anticipation of what is to come — the T-bone steak or the spicy taco with salsa or the barrel of chicken wings — so the prayer prior to the feast keeps us moment-centered and may even transform the simple meal to the sacred.
susan 02.10.06 at 1:23 am
For those interested, you can read Nussbaum’s entire essay at Arts & Letters Daily.
Matt 02.10.06 at 2:50 am
When Nussbaum gave a talk at Penn a few years ago on her take on the capabilities approach some of us asked why meaningful work wasn’t on the list. It seems quite important to most people, and certainly was thought to be by, say, Marx. She said that she just agreed with the ancients that it was better to have a life of leisure. It was pretty clear then that, despite what else she might claim, this was at least not a variety of political liberalism but a substantive conception of the good, and one that have very much to do with Nussbaum’s own intuitions and not much else. I’ve not seen anything since then that’s convinced me otherwise, and find it hard to take the time to spend much time on the work given that.
derek 02.10.06 at 4:32 am
I believe Nussbaum’s problems are an example of the trouble you run into when your whole moral universe is made up of rights with no place for obligations. For me, the fox, having no moral capacity, can commit no crime. It has no obligation not to kill the chickens in the hen coop, for instance. On the other hand, it has no right not to be hunted by humans, but I believe we have an obligation not to hunt it. A sensible moral relationship can always be identified between two beings even if only one of them has a moral sense, provided we recognise the concept of obligation. Without that, we’re niggled by the feeling that we ought to do good by animals, but we can only express it by an obviously unsatisfactory appeal to the animal’s “rights”.
Jonty 02.10.06 at 6:25 am
Balls balls balls. This argument only sounds remotely reasonable because she is applying it to a tiger in a zoo, but the majority of animals in ‘captivity’ are the products of artificial selection. We have created their capacities to fit our own needs, and can and do amend these capacities. To derive anything from them about the dignity/ethical status of the animal in question is akin to navel-gazing.
As to the lack of morality among animals – what about the fairness responses in other primates? Or the kinship behaviour of many mammals. These are certainly similar to what we describe as morality, it’s just that they come from the animals’ own sense of things, not our evaluation of their behaviour.
Stephen 02.10.06 at 7:13 am
I agree completely with derek (8) when he says that obligations, rather than rights, would be a better place to think about the ethics of our relationships to animals.
However, I’m not certain that this is really relevant to Nussbaum’s claim. What does seem most relevant is another (broadly Kantian) thought, expressed in 1, that “dignity” is doing a lot of work for Nussbaum, but it’s an undefined term. The best account of dignity I know is in Kant, but, given that he frames dignity in terms of his account of reason etc, it looks as if Nussbaum is back into the Kantian problem. I’m happy to admit that there might be a decent, workable, non-Kantian account of dignity, perhaps in terms of something like flourishing in a distinctively X-y way, but then we look like we’re back to the naturalistic fallacy problem (with the extra difficulty that our biology, some form of Aristotelianism?, is wrong). So, what’s going on?
Z 02.10.06 at 7:43 am
I hold the rather classical position that questions of ethics can be asked solely about rational creature, so “good or bad animal capabilities” sounds like non-sense to me. However, I have some sympathy for Hans Jonas ideas that human beings, because they are rational, have a responsibility towards other living creatures. Something like derek then, animals have no rights, but it may be that we have an obligation to ensure them the best possible life (as in not destroying their natural habitat and not subjecting them to horrendeous industrial treatment).
fish 02.10.06 at 9:56 am
One of Nussbaum’s major problems with applying utilitarianism to animals seems to be that she feels one cannot measure an animal’s well-being using only pleasure or pain.
Perhaps using a preference utilitarian model would be an improvement. It seems reasonable to say that a horse in a confining but pain-free stall might still have a preference for more space. This would also have the advantage of replacing her very vague “dignity” concept with the more objective (I think) idea of an animal’s preference.
John Emerson 02.10.06 at 10:00 am
All things considered, to me animal rights seems like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s as if all the old, “big” practical and theoretical problems of ethics have been dealt with, so now we can move on to new, uncharted territories.
I read little of that stuff, but do run into individual believers frequently, and at the movement level a lot of it seems to involve egregiously false sentimentalization of various species. (If you’re a mouse, kittens aren’t at all cute.) The guy who thought he could become one with the wild bears who eventually ate him is an extreme case, but just it’s the same kind of thinking. A lot of it is very human-feeling centered — the incredible bonds which owners of exotic pets form with their carnivores which have to be some kind of weird projection.
Stentor 02.10.06 at 10:24 am
My thoughts got too long for a comment post, so I’ve put them on my blog.
zdenek 02.10.06 at 12:48 pm
jon — the answer to the question you ask -and it is a good question- is that we need to see the issue of animal dignity in the first instance from Aristotelian point of view . This involves basing ethics on natural capacities of individuals. Once you identify such capacities you notice that there are continuities in this respect between humans and animals and then the sort of argument which establishes that humans have dignity can be used to show that animals have it also.
But the key is to first jettison the idea we get from religion ( Cristianity in particular ) that human dignity is derived from the fact that we are created in gods image and hence by sort of proxy we have dignity too. And also to jettison secular version of this type of approach ( Kant ) which tries to establish dignity via rarionality i.e. the idea is that we have dignity to the extent that we are rational. This approah is one Rachels favours ( observe that Nussbaum mentions him with approval ). As I said the key is to take on board essentially neo-Aristotelian approach to ethics.
zdenek 02.10.06 at 12:53 pm
fish — Nussbaum is not a utilitarian; she mentions that normative theory only to make a comparison with her own which is Aristotelianism ; a totally different animal .
zdenek 02.10.06 at 1:00 pm
bro.bartleby– Greek ethics predates mosaic religions and is not based on idea that right and wrong consists of commandments issued by God . Not only do you find a completely secular apprach in Aristotle and later in Stoics but Plato has a famous argument to demonstrate that you cannot base morality on god’s commandments this is the so called Euthyphro argument. But secondly modern approach of Kant also sidesteps god to provide an account of what morality consists in ( and of course then there are more recent approaches such as utilitarianism )
Bro. Bartleby 02.10.06 at 1:57 pm
bro. zdenek — I didn’t mention any ‘commandments’ by God. Plato’s “god” was an intangible and impersonal entity, a clockmaker, if you will. The Hebrew God is also intangible, yet is personal, in that God can make choices, such as interacting with creation (or not). Yet if you believe in either as the ultimate Creator of all, then you have to accept that how one lives one’s life may (or may not) have ultimate consequences. You have a choice, will my actions have ultimate consequences, or not. If you don’t look to a bible (or ‘how to’ book or even a science text) then you can look to nature and immediately see that in all life-forms, when you have two that are different, and one is far more powerful than the other, then a dynamic exists and the less powerful lives by the whim (or desire or innate urge) of the more powerful. So, the human consequences of a belief in a Creator is that one acknowledges that one is inferior to a superior. Of course if one does not believe in a Creator, then all of this is fairy tales, and one can go about living any way one wants (for you are your own god), so morally, amorally, or immorally, all equal options for you.
JJ 02.10.06 at 2:48 pm
#18 – “ultimate consequences”
What ultimate consequences? Being struck down mid-sentence by lightning? Or being punished with eternal damnation in the afterlife? The latter presupposes believing in an afterlife AND believing that the afterlife has some mechanism to dole out punishment based on some designated parameters that allow God to judge you on what you did in your lifetime.
So, if you believe in a higher power – God, we’ll say – you still can’t be moral unless you also buy into the whole “Sinners at the hands of an Angry God” routine (even if it’s a somewhat toned-down version)?
But wouldn’t that mean that you are acting more out of fear of punishment than out of moral certitude?
How does acting out of fear suddenly trump acting out of empathic or ethical consideration for another living being, in moral terms?
Morals are born of empathy, and (hopefully) evolve with our experiences. A person can believe in God and “ultimate consequences” and still be extremely immoral (and I’m certain we can each present numerous examples of this person). Likewise, a person can be moral without believing in God — recognizing the rights and value of others and the need to adhere to a social contract to survive and even thrive doesn’t require the interjection of a Supreme Being or Afterlife.
Heath 02.10.06 at 4:16 pm
As several have noted, ‘dignity’ is doing a lot of work for Nussbaum and there seems to be no good way to understand it. Here’s one attempt. For humans, ‘dignity’ can be understood as the right not to be subjected to the good of the whole, to have some limits on what others’ needs can demand of you. (This is also a way of thinking of “end in itself”.) So perhaps we could say the same thing about animals: there are some things we are not allowed to do to them no matter how nice it would be for us. But determining those limits requires, I think, a substantive notion of what’s important or good for animals, and we are back to the Aristotelian idea of “flourishing”.
Bro. Bartleby 02.10.06 at 5:37 pm
#19 — In Hebrew, “yirah” means both “to fear” and “to see.” Judaism teaches that the essential choice of life is to open our eyes to available opportunities, and to fear the consequences of avoiding that reality.
We have choices in life (Plato “free choice”, Augustine “freewill”), and the action (or inaction) that we take will have various consequences, and in some matters, these multiple consequences may produce an ultimate consequence — a life saved, a life lost. How many freewill choices were made before the atomic bomb incinerated Hiroshima? Does the chain of choices and consequences go back to Isaac Newton? Who really started that chain of events that ended in a mushroom cloud? Of course, our every action is but part of this ever growing complex of interacting, intersecting, forever expanding chain of events. And if we don’t “interject a Supreme Being or Afterlife” into all this, then what is it?
fish 02.10.06 at 11:33 pm
zdenek – what I wrote was unclear – apologies. For “problems with” read “criticisms of”. She’s obviously not a utilitarian but she does criticise applying utilitarianism to animals to justify the need for her “capabilities approach”. I was just suggesting that applying preference utilitarianism might get around one of her cricisms.
rollo 02.11.06 at 12:58 am
Eating “raw” oysters with the appropriate fork isn’t ethically, or morally, superior to killing a deer with your teeth.
It’s substantially different aesthetically, but mostly depending on the observer’s p.o.v.
As mammals we identify with the deer, or most of us do anyway.
The difference is in degrees of similarity, reflections in the mirror of sentimentality.
And since no firm stable lines can be drawn there, an easy assumption is there are no lines at all. Only sentiment and claptrap.
What’s the difference between chewing and digesting something’s muscles and training it to fight to the death in a pit for your entertainment? Vegans say “nothing” – others say “something”, but they’re not sure what. Bartleby’s God seems indifferent to the fate of animals generally.
When Nussbaum cites Cicero she emphasises the commonality of species as provoking the compassion of the Roman crowd, but it seems more likely it’s a commonality of being.
We’re so dull and ill-tuned it takes a wallop of stunning irrefutable evidence to recognize what’s been there all along.
Predation has a moral resonance that’s now virtually accusatory, but it hasn’t always been viewed that way, and it’s still what we do to feed ourselves, though it’s thinly disguised and deferred to others by proxy.
There was an incident a few years back in a state park somewhere in the U.S. that involved a young black bear being kicked repeatedly by a man who had run down from a tourist viewing platform to attack the bear, and who, even after he’d been arrested, thought of himself as heroic, because the bear was killing and eating a fawn.
The use of horses is a kind of slavery, but it’s so common and so close to the killing of similar creatures for food we don’t remark it.
The fact of our carnivorousness means the lawyers can insist the jots-and-tittles analysis tacitly permits any cruelty, especially the pragmatic (think of the lives we’ll save!); though there’s still a reluctance to participate, and the concurrent necessity of hiding the real conditions our meat animals live under.
Most consumers would be traumatically horrified to see how the animals they eat live, so they aren’t allowed to. But that isn’t morality, it’s squeamishness.
Drawing the lines of moral demarcation there is an impossible task in the abstract, so it doesn’t get done in the real world either.
And in the absence of moral distinction business as usual continues. But business as usual has inertia, and momentum, and it’s disturbing to consider where it may be going.
Nussbaum:
Yes and once having looked, and recognized, then what?
Balance, harmony, humility, reverence, gratitude.
Without those the polarity shifts to the demonic – selfishness coupled to the exponential increase of power and ability is always Faustian.
What’s hungered for is some kind of formula that can be applied, because it relieves the arduous burden of constant struggle to be and remain balanced, humble etc.
Using sentience as a yardstick is just more grist for the lawyers, though as a description it begins the process of recognition.
zdenek 02.11.06 at 3:37 am
bro bartleby– the idea that ‘anything goes if you dont believe in god’ is a common misunderstanding see Greek ethics and modern approaches that base morality either on sentiments as David Hume does or Kant who bases right and wrong on reason. Look how just to take an example Aristotle would answer the question ‘why should I be moral ‘: he would show that acting morally i.e. keeping promises , helping others etc . is a necessary condition of a happy life ( one involving eudaimonia or flourishing ) and that to the extent that it is in your interest to lead a good life he would argue that acting morally is in your self interest. Hence some acts promote happines e.g. treating others with respect and others e.g. steeling , dont. In other words it is false that anything goes if you dont believe in god.
Anyway your point must be that such nonreligious ethics cannot work but then you need to offer an *argument* to show that such approaches must fail, it is not enough to just *say* anything goes without belief in god ; the burden of proof is on people like you who say that Nussbaum ethics ( because it is completely secular ) is impossible .
zdenek 02.11.06 at 3:50 am
bro. bartleby– in the Danish cartoon dispute one side viz. the islamist side bases its criticism of the Danish position on religious morality ; the Danes on the other hand are completely secular. The picture then according to bro bartebly looks like this : the Danish position is amoral because there can be no right/wrong without belief in god . The Islamist position on the other hand is ethical because it is grounded in religion . So you must side with the Islamists in this case ? :-/
bad Jim 02.11.06 at 4:33 am
If we derive ethics from economical or game-theoretical considerations (and there’s a good argument that we share and reinforce certain rules just because they work) they’re not easily generalized to other species, or even to humans in societies sufficiently distinct from ours.
The basic notion of reciprocity (whether expressed by the Golden Rule, the Categorical Imperative, or Rapoport’s “Tit for tat”) only enjoins cooperation within populations which continually interact with each other in a mutually comprehensible fashion.
In practical terms this suggests nearly nothing about how other animals should be treated. It’s less reciprocity than lifelong familiarity that gives me an easy relationship with most dogs. Pigeons don’t seem to care that I yield to them, and I’ve retaliated by eating one (rôti au cacao). Pigs, cows and fish in general are nearly as unresponsive, and I’m untroubled by eating them and wearing their skins.
We’re more likely to reach consensus on how to treat our fellow creatures by considering our health, and taking a long term perspective on economics and the environment, than by pondering the bounds posed by the various moral obligations which one might choose to assume.
Taking a long enough view requires us to save as many species as we can, if only for the delight of future generations.
zdenek 02.11.06 at 6:42 am
bad jim– number of good points but what you say is really an alternative approach to the one Nussbaum offers. Second comment :the game theory and economics come in only as *explanations* of how say cooperation evolved but this does not give you ‘derivation’ of specific norms. That is to say you cannot derive any norms from naturalistic aconts of behaviour ( naturalistic fallacy problem ). Now Nussbaum on the other hand with her Aristotelianism does not have this problem with norms and hence ( at least for this reason ) her position is better.
pvk16 02.11.06 at 9:04 am
Typing on a plastic polymeric keyboard produced from petrochemicals derived from the deaths of countless animals. Living in a house built on the annihilation of the habitat of countless insects.
Somewhere maybe a line has to be drawn on the suffering of animals for our comfort. Just seems that compassion for vertebrates seems a particularly human “apartheid.” Or maybe antennae don’t feel.
eyerouge 02.11.06 at 9:09 am
bad jim:
First of all, you sound like a speciesist and seem to have an antropocentric point of view.
Second, ethics must not and aren’t in most cases derived from “economical or game-theoretical considerations”. How that is explains itself if you study ethics a year or two.
Third, even if ethics were derived the way you suggest, you could still think of hypothetical cases where you wouldn’t accept the outcome. A classy example is the one with aliens visiting earth that start treating us as we treat animlas in the meatindustry. The fact that the aliens and we do not “interact with each other in a mutually comprehensible fashion” (say because of the aliens non-interest) doesn’t prove anything or make it more justifiable to treat us as slaves.
Bro. Bartleby 02.11.06 at 10:54 am
#24:”the idea that ‘anything goes if you dont believe in god’ is a common misunderstanding …”
#25: “Danish position is amoral because there can be no right/wrong without belief in god”
Let me attempt to clarify what I am saying, it isn’t a question of “there can be no right/wrong without belief …” it is “there is no need, other than selfishness (and group survival), for right/wrong …”
I posit that the “god” of the secular world is: you and I and everyone else. When one doesn’t believe in a higher power/God/Creator, then one either believes in self and other ‘selves’ as arbitrators of how we will survive, either as individuals, or as groups.
What Aristotle is doing is creating an intellectual fiction in order to create the most comfort for the most folks. Are these ‘fictions’ real? As in the essences of Plato? Or are they evolutionary constructs that these clever animals (humans) came up with in order to live in packs.
I am saying, if no Higher Intelligency, no eternal ‘essences’ floating about awaiting for us to grab, then no ultimate ‘game plan’ … it is all us animals attempting to survive, simply because evolution hardwired us to attempt to survive, and evolution has shown that seeking comfort (being free from pain, extremes in clime, predators) raises the chance for survival. So the evolving human brain was perfect up until we moved from small hunting and gathering units, once we became creatures of the pack, then this now highly evolved brain was able to come up with stragegies for moving from small packs to large herds. Other herd animals didn’t have this ‘problem’ because their brains had not evolved to the point where they had self awareness, and all the problems that that creates.
…
gotta go, work to do in the vineyard today.
Shalom, Bro. Bartleby
zdenek 02.12.06 at 4:15 am
Bro Bartleby– regarding your take on Aristotle the answer is that what happiness consists in and what promotes it is real in a sense that it is like the question of what promotes health. It is certainly not a fiction that contaminated water will make you ill or that overeating may give you host of health problems. The Greeks see ethics in a similar way. So having a virtuous character ( psychological fact ) enhances your happiness in a way in which healthy diet enhances your health . Job of the philosopher is to just observe what type of activities and behaviour lead to ‘Eudaimonic life’ . Just as medical doctor does not posit any fictions when he advises on health matters so similarly with a philosopher who gives you advice on what you ought to do : he is not dealing with any fictions but only with facts about human nature. Again god plays no role at all in this picture
(btw recognition of how powerful an approach this is is the recognition of the roman catholic Saint Thomas Aquinas that this approach can be absorbed by RC church ; in fact Aquinas adopts and incorporates almost without modification . Aristotle’s ethics into Christian approach )
zdenek 02.12.06 at 4:33 am
Bro — regarding ‘no ultimate game plan’. The way people look on the role of evolution in the apearance of morality ( se Eliot Sober , Brian Skyrms or D. Dennett ) is that morality is needed to coordinate our social activities and interactions so that conflict is minimised ( and so morality is just an adaptation just like an eye is ). And by using game theory it can be shown that people who act altruistically will have an advantage over selfish freeriders and so morality can be shown to have evolved by natural selection.
To say that we are just selfish and hence morality could not evolve is not the accepted view. What most peolple seem to think is that a type of pluralist picture of our motivation is true ( Eliot Sober ): we can act selfisly , we can act altruistically and we can act in between . Also observe that there is lots of cooperation in nature as Darwin already observed so the idea that evolution involves only selfish behaviour is not true.
zdenek 02.12.06 at 5:29 am
Bro– I must confess that I have been avoiding a deeper question that you raise and I will try to answer it; it is a problem for all secular ethics and arguably for non secular once too. The question is simply *why should I be moral ?* Can secular ethics answer this question ? The answer from sort of Kantian perspective ( actually Thomas Nagel to be exact ) looks like this :
‘ how would you like it if someone did that to you ?’
suppose you are about to steal someone’s information from their computer and someone said to you ‘ how would you like it if someone did that to you ? This is somehow supposed to stop you but why ?
The answer is because if you hated it when someone did it to you you admit that she has a reason not do it to you. If you admit that, you have to ask what that reason is. It cannot be that it is *you* that she is hurting of all people in the world but rather a more general reason anyone in her position including you , if you were in that position has also.
But if anyone in the position where they can steel info from someone elses computer has for not stealing it then that applies to you too. In other words you have a reason not to steal the stuff. As Nagel points out this is a matter of simple consistency .
This is Kantian because it involves the idea that acting morally involves acting from a nonpersonal perspective ; moral point of view is universal point of view , kind of like when you do math : you reason as a member of a community of reasoners who can see that 2+2=4 .
bad Jim 02.12.06 at 6:43 am
The notion that morals can be derived a priori is as difficult to digest as the thought they could be god-given.
The laws we have are the product of thousands of years of contentious negotiation. They were not conferred upon us by the last millennium’s favorite text, nor were they derived from a collection of axioms.
Our lives are bounded, fastened and festooned by laws and customs we and our predecessors brought into existence, which we are at liberty to modify at will. At least in theory, this is an experimental discipline.
And, of course, at every moment, each of us is both the designer of the experiment and one of the subjects. We ought to insist that our various polities extend their planning horizons at least into the immediate future. Now that we’ve scraped the last fish from our oceans, where will our next dish come from?
Bro. Bartleby 02.12.06 at 10:34 am
My argument is that you folks are analyzing and operating on the freckles on the skin, and ignoring what underlays this thin veil. You are wrapped up in the “our lives are bounded, fastened and festooned by laws and customs …” the surface, but either ignore, or are unwilling to take scalpel to freckled skin.
Perhaps we need to look to the ‘mad’ for advice? Certain ‘disorders’ cause the individual to peer beneath the veil of ‘humanity’ and confront the eternal void. We have amble labels for these poor folks. Prisons are full of individuals who think they understand that life is a ‘joke’ or as some say, ‘cosmic joke’ … so I’m saying that if one really believes in no Higher Power, then for the most part evolution has ‘kept that secret’ from all beings, until … until the human mind crossed over into self awareness. Then the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, we need this powerful brain to survive, because our puny bodies can’t stand against other more powerful animals, yet that powerful brain has a down side, it can now see the void of nothingness, and this too becomes a feared predator. All the “festooned laws and customs” keep that new predator at bay, and all of science and philosophy are but 2x4s nailed to the door in order that that door to the void is never really opened. A few poor souls manager by chance or circumstance to open that door, and all the rest of us pity these poor souls as they decend into ‘madness’ …
The heart of the question, if no “God” then we are simply another accumulation of atoms that came together by chance and evolution and have a very brief existence before dissolving and disassembling into the original atoms that constucted us, and that is it. Birth, life, death. Period. No rhyme or reason. And yes, we can sit about and study all this, and even philosophize about it, but again, we are just hammering more 2x4s to that door from which behind is the ultimate reality — nothing. And after all, isn’t it Truth that we say we are seeking?
zdenek 02.13.06 at 5:55 am
bad jim– the proposal that core of morality is known a priori does not say that all laws must be known in this manner . The idea is that only the foundation moral principles have this character. So ‘ act only on principles that can become universal law ‘ is then a priori.
Or see Rawls whose principles that would be chosen behind the ‘veil of ignorance’ have a priori character essentially but this does not apply to all legislation .
So even if laws we have have essentially organic character ( as you want to argue ) and took many years to evolve there is no reason why few basic moral principles are not involved that can be known a priori. Think of spiders constructing their webs which may be describable by few mathematical formulas.
zdenek 02.13.06 at 6:43 am
bro bartleby– two comments : first the idea that our lives must be empty etc. if there is no big brother calling the shots is countered nicely by Richard Dawkins ( I think ‘unweaving the rainbow ‘). But second isnt the idea that there is this supernatural puppet-master who knows what you think etc *spooky*? Is the picture you describe really that cool ? I mean universe with such a super intelligence that has that much power ( the deal we get in Judeo Christian deal: supernatural person )that is a person is frightening and spooky . Maybe the right sentiment then should be that we hope that there is no god.
Bro. Bartleby 02.13.06 at 9:53 am
Bro. zdendek, you are reading more into what I say, than what I say, on the contrary, I think not “idea that our lives must be empty” for my argument is that you will over compensate, and have a life overfilled with material and or mental activity. And the puppet-master and all the rest of the frightening and spooky stuff comes from you, for I am only seeking a discussion on first cause (other than a mumbo-jumbo uncaused big bang). I’m willing to leave myth, mumbo-jumbo, and folklore out of the discussion, yet it seems to me that these too are humans attempting to stuff the void.
zdenek 02.14.06 at 1:50 am
bro bartleby–explanation that says universe has started with ‘big-bang’ is not ‘mumbo jumbo’ and is preferable to invoking supernatural causes. The reason is simple, good explanations should be :
1)true and known to be true ( or at least very highly confirmed)
2) shed light on the phenomena that are being explained
This is precisely what big bang meets but explanation in terms of supernatural person does not. You cannot know whether the universe was created so you cannot know whether such explanation is true ; simply no way to test such a claim .
Secondly when you say ‘god did it ‘ you are trying to use explanation that is more obscure , more in need of explanation than the thing you want explained ( you are not explaining why your camera is not working when you say gremlin did it ) but this is precisely how supernatural explanations work.
This point is made by D.Hume in his ‘dialogues concerning natural religion’.As far as I can tell there is no answer to this criticism Hume makes.
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