phil week 8
john1183
PuppiesPigsandPeople2.pptxPuppies, Pigs, and People:
Eating Meat and Marginal Cases
Fred’s Basement
We would be horrified to learn of the actual existence of a case such as the one described in “Fred’s Basement”. We may feel for Fred regarding his inability to enjoy chocolate, but we cannot condone his torture of puppies, regardless.
If we agree with this claim, then Norcross believes we must agree as well with the argument that we cannot condone the purchasing and consuming of factory raised meat.
Why not?
The puppies in the story are kept in severely confined spaces. They lived stress filled lives and endure continual mutilation. Their abuse and death does not provide essentially to Fred’s diet. It is solely for gustatory pleasure.
Norcross believes this is exactly the case when it comes to animals raised for consumption.
In addition, not only is meat eating not essential for human diets, but many may actually benefit from its removal.
What then, may be the differences?
Norcross relates that first off, Fred is responsible for the torture of the puppies himself, where most Americans buy their meat already packaged and are far removed from the actual butchering process. Is this relevant though? If Fred had bought the cocoamone from someone who had tortured and killed the puppies for him, would we feel any better about it?
Another difference may be the fact that many consumers are unaware of the abusive situations that occur in factory farms. Can we then save our condemnation for those who purchase meat with full knowledge of these conditions?
We might instead argue that while the conditions of such factories may be terrible, our ceasing to eat meat wouldn’t change anything about the suffering of the animals. Factory farming is such a large business that one consumer, or even twenty wouldn’t cause the farms to shut down entirely.
Norcross responds to this in two ways.
First he offers a counter example.
“You visit a friend in an exotic location, say Alabama. Your friend takes you out to eat at the finest restaurant in Tuscaloosa. For dessert you select the house specialty, “Chocolate Mousse a la Bama”, served with a small cup of coffee, which you are instructed to drink before eating the mousee. The mousse is quite simply the most delicious dessert you have ever taster. Never before has chocolate tasted so rich and satisfying. Tempted to order a second, you ask your friend what makes this mousse so delicious. He informs you that the mousse itself is ordinary, but the coffee contains a concentrated dose of cocamone, the newly discovered chocolate enhancing hormone. Researchers at Auburn University have perfected a technique for extracting cocamone from the brains of freshly slaughtered puppies, who have been subjected to lives of pain and frustration. Each puppy’s brain yields four doses, each of which is effective for about fifteen minutes, just long enough to enjoy one serving of mousse. You are, naturally, horrified and disgusted. You will certainly not order another serving, you tell your friend. In fact, you are shocked that your friend, who has always seemed amorally decent person, could have both recommended the dessert to you and eaten one himself, in full awareness of the loathsome process necessary for the experience. He agrees that the suffering of the puppies is outrageous, and that the gain in human pleasure in no way justifies the appalling treatment they have to endure. However, neither he nor you can save any puppies now by refraining from consuming cocamone. Cocamone production is now Alabama’s leading industry, so it is too large to respond to the behavior of one or two consumers. Since the puppies will suffer no matter what either of you does, you may as well enjoy the mousse.”
Does this explanation make us feel any better about the slaughter of the puppies?
The next response is simply to deny it. If one chicken eater gave up eating chicken, certainly the industry would not respond. If they all did, then certainly the industry would fail. Is this a valid excuse?
If (let’s say) 10,000 people gave up eating chicken, that would equate to 25000 chickens per year being saved (presuming each individual eats 25 chickens per year). Given that, Norcross states that you would have a 1 in 10,000 chance of making any difference to the lives of chickens. Isn’t that too small to be regarded?
He doesn’t believe so. By ceasing to eat chickens, you will be saving 25 chickens per year. Even if your giving up chicken has only a small chance of preventing suffering, the suffering to be reduced would be greater than your chance of preventing it, therefore your continued consumption is not excused.
As well, your turn to vegetarianism makes you one of a growing number of people who are choosing that path. The more people who choose this path, the more numbers that will affect factory farming.
There may be a further difference though. In the case of Fred, it is precisely the torture of the puppies that produces the cocamone. In the case of factory farms, the suffering is a foreseen, but not intended side effect.
This foreseen but not intended consequence is essential to the Doctrine of Double Effect which says that action may be permissible along those same lines, as well as others. Yet the doctrine also states that the good must outweigh the bad, so we must then analyze whether the good brought about by the suffering of the animals on the factory farms outweighs the negative. Norcross does not believe that it does. He counters with the question of whether or not the puppies’ suffering would be excused if it was an unintended side effect.
Finally he concludes that ultimately we condemn Fed’s behavior while condoning meat-eating (if we in fact do), because puppies are morally different than animals raised for consumption. What is the cause for the distinction? Perhaps rationalization. Do puppies have a greater rationalization process than chickens? Than pigs?
Humans vs Animals’ Ethical Status
The idea of rationality plays into the debate about why we have one standard of treatment for human animals, but not other animals. It is not permissible to torture and eat and human, but it is okay to torture and eat a cow. Humans are considered to have rational capabilities while other animals do not, or at least not in the same degree.
A challenge to this view lies in consideration of “marginal cases”. Whatever type and level of rationality we take as being the standard which sets humans apart from other animals will either be lacking in some humans or present in some animals. For instance if we use moral reflection as a standard, then some humans will not be capable of this, either temporarily as in the case of infants and those who are temporarily cognitively disabled, or it may be gone permanently as in the case of senility or the permanently comatose. Some also have never and will never have this ability as in the case of the severely mentally disabled. If this is our claim to the separation, wouldn’t we have to exclude these humans? Do we then have to allow for the possibility of these humans being used as food? Perhaps we may exclude the temporarily disabled, but certainly not the others.
Cohen:
“{the argument from marginal cases} fails; it mistakenly treats an essential feature of humanity as though it were a screen for sorting humans. The capacity for moral judgment that distinguished humans from animals is not a test to be administered to human beings one by one. Persons who are unable, because of some disability, to perform the full moral functions natural to human beings are certainly not for that reason ejected from the moral community. The issue is one of a kind… What humans retain when disabled, animals never had”.
White:
“Nor does this, as some contend, exclude infants, children, the feeble minded, the comatose, the dead or the generations yet unborn. Any of these may be for various reasons empirically unable to fulfill the full role of right-holder. But… they are logically possible subjects of rights to whom the full language of rights can significantly, however falsely, be used. It is a misfortune, not a tautology, that these persons cannot exercise or enjoy, claim or waive their rights or do their duty or fulfill their obligations”.
Schmidtz:
“Of course, some chimpanzees lack the characteristic features in virtue of which chimpanzees command respect as a species, just as some humans lack the characteristic features in virtue of which humans command respect as a species. It is equally obvious that some chimpanzees have cognitive capacities (for example) that are superior to the cognitive capacities of some humans. But whether every human being is superior to every chimpanzee is beside the point. The point is that we can, we do, and we should make decisions on the basis of our recognition that mice, chimpanzees and humans are relevantly different types. We can have it both ways after all. Or so a speciesist could argue”.
Each of these arguments claims that a particular or a set of features has so much moral significance that its presence or lack determines whether or not a behavior is moral or immoral. Yet at the same time a presence or lack of that feature in a particular case is not important. The relevant question Norcross thinks, is whether or not the presence or lack is normal.
Suppose the following:
ten famous people are on trial in the afterlife for crimes against humanity. On the basis of conclusive evidence, five are found guilty and five are found not guilty. Four of the guilty are sentenced to an eternity of torment, and one is granted an eternity of bliss. Four of the innocent are granted an eternity of bliss, and one is sentenced to an eternity of torment. The one innocent who is sentenced to torment asks why he, and not the fifth guilty person, must go to hell. Saint Peter replies, “Isn’t it obvious Mr. Ghandi? You are male. The other four men—Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, George W. Bush, and Richard Nixon—are all guilty. Therefore the normal condition for a male defendant in this trial is guilt. The fact that you happen to be innocent is irrelevant. Likewise, of the five female defendants in this trial, only one was guilty. Therefore the normal condition for female defendants in this trial is innocence. That is why Margaret Thatcher gets to go to heaven instead of you.”
A second response is that cognitively deficient humans really are morally inferior to non deficient humans. Can we then use these humans as food?
“I doubt that anyone will be able to come up with a concrete and morally relevant difference that would justify, say, using a chimpanzee in an experiment rather than a human being with less capacity for reasoning, moral responsibility, etc. Should we then experiment on the severely retarded? Utilitarian considerations aside, we feel a special obligation to care for the handicapped members of our own species, who cannot survive in this world without such care.…In addition, when we consider the severely retarded, we think, ‘That could be me’. It makes sense to think that one might have been born retarded, but not to think that one might have been born a monkey.…Here we are getting away from such things as ‘morally relevant differences’ and are talking about something much more difficult to articulate, namely, the role of feeling and sentiment in moral thinking.”
We feel a sense of protection toward these humans which would prevent us using them for food. Is this the distinction then?
Agent and Patient
But what is the moral relevance of rationality? Why should we think that the possession of a certain level or kind of rationality renders the possessor's interests of greater moral significance than those of a merely sentient being? In Bentham's famous words “The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? But, Can they suffer?”.
What does one say in response to this?
If a being is incapable of moral reasoning, at even the most basic level, if it is incapable of being moved by moral reasons, claims, or arguments, then it cannot be a moral agent. It cannot be subject to moral obligations, to moral praise or blame. Punishing a dog for doing something “wrong” is no more than an attempt to alter its future behavior. So long as we are undeceived about the dog's cognitive capacities, we are not, except metaphorically, expressing any moral judgment about the dog's behavior.
This still doesn’t seem to say much about the status of animals as moral patients.
Finally Norcross says:
“It seems that any attempt to justify the claim that humans have a higher moral status than other animals by appealing to some version of rationality as the morally relevant difference between humans and animals will fail on at least two counts. It will fail to give an adequate answer to the argument from marginal cases, and, more importantly, it will fail to make the case that such a difference is morally relevant to the status of animals as moral patients as opposed to their status as moral agents.”
“I conclude that our intuitions that Fred's behavior is morally impermissible are accurate. Furthermore, given that the behavior of those who knowingly support factory farming is morally indistinguishable, it follows that their behavior is also morally impermissible.”
