Christine Korsgaard argues that we can extend a Kantian moral framework to include other animals. But her argument fails.
Kant was speaking about a moral framework which he believed all sufficiently mature and enlightened humans- but not ducks or pigs- would assent to such that it would regulate their own conduct and personal and professional interactions.
I suppose you could extend your moral framework to certain types of animals which dwell with us in a mutually beneficial or pleasing manner. Indeed, you could go further and treat certain inanimate objects in this same respectful way. You may put arguments in the mouths of your chair or your cat and say things like 'well, obviously, my good friend, the chair, or my learned colleague, the cat, will most certainly concur that we should treat each other gently and considerately.' Others may consider you somewhat eccentric but they might equally feel you are a kindly soul who perhaps has had a rather lonely life. But is what you are doing really philosophy? Sadly, the answer is yes. It may be that what enlightened people will want to do, if they take up philosophy, is to be kindly, eccentric, and so very very lonely that they spend their time being deeply respectful and considerate of their cushions, chairs, cats and what have you.
On the other hand, simply by believing in karma and elaborating a theory of 'aashrav' of karma-binding particles, you can immediately gain a prescriptive and useful theory which promotes animal rights while seeking to make human society kinder and gentler.
Peter advocates a different path- viz talking stupid shite. He writes-
(For Korsgaard) Value does not exist as a sort of aura surrounding things in the world itself; value comes from valuing. It comes from the fact that people, and perhaps agents other than people, seek some things and avoid others.
That is preference, not value. I may prefer fizzy pop to vintage Champagne. But I know the value of Champagne is much greater.
Without valuers, there is no value.
Not really. There are certain signs commonly associated with a thing of high value- e.g. it is preserved carefully and locked away from thieves.
More generally, if a thing is rare and attained only with effort it could become valuable without any valuer stipulating intrinsic worth or utility to it. The thing may look insignificant. But, if rare by common knowledge it can solve a coordination problem of an economic type.
Encountering something of this type, you may- without valuing it yourself, nevertheless take it with you and then, at some later point, you may show it to some one who appears skilled at appraisal.
It is sufficient that 'oikeiosis' obtains- i.e. a being has natural 'attachments'- for value to exist even if no valuing occurs. This is the remarkable discovery embedded in the Price Equation or the work of John Maynard Smith.
Peter, though a 'Sciencey' Australian, ignores all this so as to write like an ignorant cretin- i.e. a Harvard Philosophy professor.
If we start here, we face the fact that valuing can be based on all kinds of bias, caprice and distortion. To be valued (by someone or something) is surely not enough to be worthy of it.
One may speak of Expected Value to cover such cases. There is a state of the world in which you are more than worthy and other states where you are a useless pile of shite.
Korsgaard wants to resolve this by looking more closely at how we act and make decisions in everyday cases – not when we are trying to be especially kind to others, but generally. A full understanding of some of our own ordinary choices will push us, she thinks, to take seriously others’ interests and goals.
Or it may do the reverse. You notice that you are particularly attentive to that wealthy relative who has just returned, having made his pile, from the diamond mines of El Kazar. Why are you slobbering all over the chap? Oh. Right. I want his money. Should I poison him? But he has a lot of nephews. I know! I'll arrange a big feast and get shot of the lot of them!
The Kantian idea is that a kind of fulcrum is provided by your own actions, by your sense of yourself as a decision-maker who acts for reasons. This sense of your own reasonableness can lead you to treat others in a way that respects their own preferences – not to go along with everything they might want, but to have a basic respect for what they are trying to do.
Quite right! Just before you got up to invite everyone to a big feast, your cousin stood up and made the same invitation. That fucker is going to poison you! Now the trick is to get him to poison himself along with all the others so you alone inherit everything.
For Kant, the ‘others’ whose goals we come to respect are other people. For Korsgaard, they include animals as well.
Once one understands an animals 'goals', it becomes easier to hunt it or turn a profit on it in some other way. But what is true of animals is also true of ourselves. We need to hide our true 'goals' or we will be manipulated by those shrewder than ourselves. Indeed, it were well to dissimulate your goals even from yourselves. Become the mask of virtue- or imbecility, if that is safer- that others see. Bide your time. Develop high awareness of your environment and a 'kairotic' sense of timing. Both animals and humans are valued for their kairotic assistance or intervention. 'Thank God the dog barked when it did!' is a sentiment we might expect to hear. It is similar to, 'thank God that useless son of mine was home just at that time'. We might say, 'I think that was more than luck. That dog is devoted to you. It senses things you don't. Your son isn't really useless. He keeps quiet but he notices everything. See how, in your moment of travail, those who really love you rose to the challenge? Time reveals all for those who truly desire your good keep silent but act in a timely manner. Such is the nature of the auspicious. The dog is auspicious, the son is auspicious. Of mere talkers, on the other hand, be suspicious. When the hour of testing strikes, they will be found wanting.'
The argument starts simply. When we do ordinary things – decide what to do with our weekend, for example – we usually take ourselves to have reasons for doing what we’re doing.
No we don't. We have preferences for which we seldom bother having reasons.
Suppose you made a choice while knowing that there is no reason you could offer for it. Then you are, in a way, incoherent, not a genuine agent.
Nonsense! Why the fuck do you need to offer a reason? Are you a slave? Are you being watched by the KGB? Only a nutter would have a reason for everything she does. But she won't be a 'genuine agent', she will be a fictional nutter.
You might resist at this early step, and say: ‘I just do what I want at that moment! I don’t care about the deeper coherence of my actions.’ How bad is that? Maybe not that bad – we should not overstate the case. But there is a point here. When we don’t think that reasons can be given for what we’re doing, something important is lacking in our choices.
Sez who? Anybody smart? No. Some stupid shitheads teaching a worthless subject. What is happening here is a puerile attempt to force a card on you. What we need to do is to say, 'Something is lacking in your choices. You are not truly fulfilling yourself. Why? It is because nature intended you to give out beejays at truck stops. Why are you fighting your own nature? Who do you think you are fooling?' Gaslighting works both ways.
So you think your choices have reasons behind them and, if these reasons are good ones, then you think that others, in principle, could see this, too.
It is a good idea to have reasons for what you do if you are an agent not a principal or if you could come under suspicion for some sophisticated form of crime or grave moral lapse. Only if your life is wholly inauthentic- you are an undercover agent or spy- would you need to constantly provide yourself with explanations for how come you are giving beejays at a truck-stop rather than picking up the groceries like you promised.
You recognise in yourself, and think that others should recognise in you, a choice aimed at something worth seeking, and a choice by someone who can make that call.
Something worth seeking? Like what? The purity of the Race? The Communist Revolution? Liberation from Patriarchy by putting LSD in the water supply? A choice which you make not because it is what you want to do but so that other people will 'recognize' something in yourself is likely to be deceptive or delusional.
This means that what you are after is ‘good’ not just in a sense confined to you, but visible to everyone. Once the goodness of your choice is visible to everyone, it is a kind of absolute goodness – a goodness that anyone could recognise.
It is stupidity of this sort which is responsible for virtue signaling and gesture politics and all the hypocritical bullshit we have to put up with.
Does this view ignore the obvious fact that different people want different things?
It ignores the fact that you are shitting higher than your arsehole.
What seems good to you need not seem good to me. The idea is not that you think that everyone should want the same things as you, or the idea that your valuing something should always make others override their own interests. But, according to Korsgaard, your valuing something does give you, and what you value, a status that others should take into account. The fact that you value something in this way makes it part of what she calls ‘a shared or common good’.
What we value is the sight of Professors of Ethics giving beejays at truck stops. A shared or common good is one which is non-rival, if not non-excludable. We may not all want to see Professors giving beejays but we want to know that this is happening.
So far, all this is about how things look to you, as you make ordinary choices. But you can see that other people are like this, too. In others, we can see the same kind of pursuit of goals. Just as the reasonableness of your choices takes your goals into the realm of a shared good, the same applies to what they choose. A respect for our own rationality leads us to see other people, also, as making choices that we should respect.
Indeed! On our honeymoon, we should let everybody fuck our bride so as to show our respect for the choice which they have made for reasons we hold in common.
I suppose the objection could be made that desires are 'mimetic'- i.e. we adopt the goals of others who are perhaps more highly placed- but, for this very reason, they are not non-rival at all but may involve a thymotic agon.
However, even non-rival goods have an opportunity cost. If that is too high we may that 'common good' to cease to exist.
Kant’s aim was to justify a respect for other people.
There is no need to justify a thing if you actually have it nor would there be any point justifying it if you can't attain it. I can easily justify my existence as Beyonce without being Beyonce but, lacking Beyonce's mega-bucks, my justifications don't actually do me or anybody else any good.
Animals don’t count.
What about babies?
They don’t make choices in the way we do,
Comparative Psychology has been very useful because the opposite is the case. Nobody- except an imaginary nutter- makes choices the way shit psilosophers say they do.
and can never become part of a community where these principles of reciprocal respect apply.
Which is how come we can't imagine a family living together with dogs and cats and horses and so forth.
Korsgaard, however, thinks this understates the power of the Kantian approach. Though other animals can’t make choices in our reflective way,
Nobody can, though some may pretend to, just as others may pretend to be guided by the Holy Spirit
we can see that they do pursue what is good for them: we humans ‘are not the only beings for whom things can be good or bad’.
In which case we humans are not the only beings for whom this line of reasoning is stupid shit
In this case, too, the goodness they seek becomes more than mere goodness-for-them.
And their shit becomes more than mere shit-for-them.
It is also an absolute good, part of a universally shared good.
Like this absolute shit, part of a universally derided shitting higher than one's arsehole.
And we are committed (already, from our own case) to respecting that sort of quest.
Who gives a fuck if you respect the hell out of various types of shit or shitting? You are simply a waste of space.
We should then change or abandon a great many ways we treat animals, rejecting not just the excesses of high-intensity farming,
Why has it not already happened? The fact is low-intensity farming is much cheaper and is in fact the only option in less developed regions. Only because of quite complicated calculations bolstered by a sophisticated financial and agribusiness private-public partnership do we have high-intensity farming in relatively advanced economies.
but humane farming where death might be painless, and animal experimentation in research even when the work might, because of its benefits, pass a utilitarian test.
Markets aggregate preferences based on effective demand and supply which in turn do depend on utility functions. If high intensity farming prevails it passes a utilitarian test- unless market failure arises in which case we say that the allocation of Hohfeldian rights and obligations is sub-optimal. If a philosopher sticks his nose in, he is soon chased away because he is babbling worthless nonsense.
Some of what might be questioned here is Korsgaard’s extension of the Kantian argument to animals – the idea that their very different choices still aim at something we should see as a shared or absolute good.
A good may be non-rival, but this is generally not the case for organic life forms. There is always an opportunity cost. Either you can have goats or you can have flowers- not both. Equally, either you can have kids or you can have hyenas. If you try to have both, either the hyenas will eat the kids or the kids will drive away the hyenas by annoying the fuck out of them.
But I think the more basic problem is found at a much earlier stage in the argument, in the attempt to get our own choices to play that fulcrum-like role.
Let’s return to those ordinary choices that set the story into motion, and work through things again. I, after some thought, decide I want to do X. I think I have good reason. I think that others will see that it makes sense for me to do X. They will see that, if they were in my shoes, they would want to do something similar – more accurately, not if they were in my shoes, as it shouldn’t matter which particular person is involved, but in shoes like mine. This makes my choice defensible. In a way, the goodness of what I am after, along with the reasonableness of what I am up to, is visible to everyone.
So far, though, there is no reason why I should expect them, in very different shoes, to put any value of their own on what I am doing.
This is Peter's mistake. There can always be such a reason. It doesn't have to be an unassailable reason- which in any case is never known to obtain.
They will endorse it, I think, for anyone in shoes like mine, but there’s no reason yet for them to endorse it beyond that.
One could stipulate for it as part of a bunch of protocols for the desirability of which there could be 'overlapping consensus'.
You can have a respect for my good sense without being motivated to help me. You might choose to help me, if you are OK with what I am doing or just a benevolent sort of person. But you might not, and your refusal can be both reasonable and compatible with my reasonableness.
But we can stipulate for a diluted protocol to govern what is meant by 'help'. Indeed, in polite society, we often refer to fictitious help that our colleagues or family members gave us. Indeed, we may go further and claim Divine help or the support of influential Galaxies or types of quantum particles.
Korsgaard says at one point, when talking about these ordinary choices, that we not only think that we have good reason to pursue the projects we do, but also ‘expect others not to interfere with that pursuit without some important reason for doing so, and even to help us pursue them should the need arise.’ In reply: I don’t expect this. I hope for it, am pleased when it happens, and am also glad to live in a society where interference is discouraged. But I don’t think that, just because another person will see that what I am doing makes sense for someone in a situation like mine, they will think they have reason to help me. Their situation, again, is different.
But not very different. Change the protocols a bit and the dispute disappears.
Some trouble comes from the word ‘absolute’, which Korsgaard uses when talking about the important kind of goodness. She does not mean absolute in a lofty sense. Something is absolutely good when it can be recognised as good by everyone. But there are two ways something can be recognised as good by everyone. It might be recognised, by everyone, as good for anyone who is in shoes like mine. That does not mean it is recognised as good in a further sense where it becomes part of a shared good, a good that everyone has reason to pursue.
Everybody recognizes that this is worthless verbiage. Nobody is going to come running to either of these two cretins for help with anything which requires half a brain.
It’s an attempt to leverage the inevitable sociability of human life into respect for the goals of others
It is merely empty verbiage.
Korsgaard says that, given how we make choices and defend them, ‘we think that our achieving our ends is good from the point of view of others and not merely good-for-us.’
But she only says that because she gets paid a little money to talk nonsense of a virtue signaling sort.
It is, indeed, often visible from their point of view as good for someone in a situation of a particular kind, but so far that’s all. There is a context-relativity here, a relativity to circumstances, that keeps recurring and does not go away.
No. There is mere stupidity and hypocrisy and a small number of bogus scholars earning a little money for promoting an academic ponzi scheme.
This is not working so far. Perhaps there are other ways to make the case. Korsgaard here is treading one route through a blizzard (perhaps a hailstorm) of argument in Kant’s own writings, and she is downplaying a lot of grand but less plausible moves he makes. (Even I, very far indeed from this project, sometimes think I can glimpse, through the blizzard or hail, the castle that keeps Kantians going.)
That castle was actually Kafka's.
Korsgaard is reorganising and refining the ideas that seem most likely to get us somewhere. So let’s try various options. Maybe a wrong turn was taken with the idea that when you think your projects are reasonable, you treat your goals as part of a shared good.
This is clearly a crazy idea. Only if your project used up no scarce resources whatsoever- including cognitive resources- could this condition be met. In other words, the thing is reasonable only if no reasoning whatsoever went into it.
Might it be enough that you think you have good reason to value something, and you recognise that others do, too?
This is not a reason. It is either a preference or it is nothing. Reasons use up cognitive resources. They must 'pay for themselves'- i.e. if you have a reason for something then that reason helped you get more of that thing then would otherwise have been the case.
Then other people might have reason to respect your valuing, and you might have reason to value theirs, even though what each person values is quite different. However, even if others have reason to respect your good sense, given your situation, if they don’t see what you value as part of a shared good, then they have no reason to help you. The idea that the goals a person reasonably pursues become part of a shared good really does matter here, and we are not getting to it.
We can't. Why? Scarcity exists. Even cognitive effort has an opportunity cost. A non-rival good still uses up resources. We may want it replaced by a rival good. If economic conditions, or the military situation, is likely to worsen, we may want to discourage people from gaining happiness by contemplating the cosmos.
Another way to handle the situation might be to say that the ordinary choices that get the story going are special ones, or are restricted in some way; perhaps they don’t include choices intended to impede others. If I want other people to respect my choices, these should be choices that include some respect for them.
Why? This is sheer magical thinking. As a matter of fact, I respect the hell out of the choices made by a super-star investor. I don't expect her to show the slightest respect for my portfolio choice. Indeed, I pay a premium to get her to manage my slender savings.
It is not the case that we expect a Doctor to listen to our medical advise in return for taking the pills they prescribe. That way lies madness.
I suppose polite people consider the show of respect to others to be a sign of good breeding. But it need only be a show. Anything more might damage the socio-economic fabric to such an extent that the project of politeness is quietly abandoned.
In an earlier article about Kant and animals, Korsgaard considers a restriction of the argument to goals such as avoiding suffering.
To suffer for a cause may be beneficial. But why suffer stupidity of this sort?
In the case of these goals, the attitude we each have shows that we regard the goal as objectively good, and hence good when the interests of others are at stake.
Attitudes can't show something is 'objectively' good or bad. At best, they are evidence of a subjective preference. The fact that I want to sleep with my wife does not mean I think everybody wants to sleep with her. This is because there is an attraction she holds for me which simply does not exist with respect to most other people- with whom however she may share other interests and to whom she may be bound by other ties of affection.
Alternatively, or as well, the kind of respect we should give each other, based on all this, might be very minimal – perhaps it’s just that each of us should not interfere in what others are doing without good reason.
There could be a tort to cover this. There is no need to bring ethics and philosophy into the matter. Why not simply say 'we should not fart loudly in each other's faces without a really really good reason'? The thing is foolish. By contrast saying 'don't fart in another's face', or 'don't interfere with others', is sensible- iff you are talking to Korsgaard-level cretins. We understand that we should not do these things. They are naughty. If it turns out that we have done either of these things, we'd better have a good excuse ready.
That’s all fine, but none of it makes much difference. We can make all these concessions – only considering goals that aren’t selfish and disruptive, only looking for minimal respect from others – and there’s still no leverage being gained here, of the kind that should get other people on board with your projects, or you on board with theirs.
Why? Because there is no negotiation- no give and take. It would be easy enough to get overlapping consensus for a bunch of protocols if the thing were worth doing.
The picture of how we are supposed to end up behaving does look sensible when we apply it to non-interference and preventing suffering. Surely that sort of thing is OK? Yes, that sort of thing is OK, but not because of a story showing that you have to think something like this in order to make sense of your own ordinary decisions.
This is perfectly fair. But why wait so long to admit it?
Part of what is going on is an attempt to leverage the inevitable sociability of human life into respect for the goals of others. We are indeed social beings; there is a good deal of fantasy and myth in the idea of a wholly hedonistic and ego-centred person. But that does not tell us what attitude to have to the projects of those around us.
Yes it does. If you are 'hedonistic and ego-centric' your attitude should be one of irritation or anger at any project of those around you which does not yield you pleasure or advantage.
The mathematical field of ‘game theory’ is partly about the fact that, while the outcomes of our choices are usually dependent on what others do, we only sometimes have incentive to act in ways that maintain the sociality we all benefit from.
But 'mechanism design' is 'reverse game theory'. That's what tells you how to not just preserve but enhance the benefits which flow from 'sociality'. However, this may initially reduce the salience of relationships as opposed to transactions of a 'take it or leave it' type.
The Kantian project was an attempt to turn some hidden assumptions underlying ordinary action into something that fosters a kind of human moral community.
It failed. There are Christian communities in plenty. There are no Kantian communities.
For Korsgaard, this leads to a further moral revolution, with every supermarket transformed. Kantian ethics, especially as Korsgaard handles it, is a vast construction erected on a tiny point, on miraculously little. But no miracle is possible here.
It is certainly possible that, in my own life-time, 'every supermarket is transformed'. We may find it cheaper and more beneficial to health to embrace some novel form of nutrition and energy extraction such that we vote with our new surpluses of money for larger and larger expanses of the earth to be dedicated to the flourishing of animals. Some 'miracle' of a technological type may be required for this to happen. But it could happen. A crap philosophy may be associated with its happening. But then all philosophies are crap at actually changing the world.
Where do we go from here? If we give up on arguments like this, what comes next?
Giving up on other equally specious arguments. Quitting an idiotic profession and retraining as a beejay provider at a truck-stop near you.
I’ll sketch some outlines of another view, beginning, as Korsgaard does, with general ideas about choice, valuation and moral concepts.
You will fail. Why? The 'general idea' of choice involves 'opportunity cost'. Where this does not arise there is no choice, merely a preference or a capricious act. The general idea of 'valuation' too is linked to scarcity and thus opportunity cost. Moral concepts, however, arise in a manner such that some 'opportunity costs' disappear. Behavior becomes inelastic and predictable. That can be a good thing. It reduces Uncertainty. But too much of it could be a very bad thing. That is why philosophy can have 'Newcombe problems' such that one is both moral as well as rational in an economic sense. But this cashes out simply as having a protocol bound decision process to which equitable remedies may be applied under exigent circumstances such that no new rule is created.
In trying to understand the business of moral thinking and debate, philosophers have tended to work with alternatives that have a kind of tidiness.
This is not the case. Philosophers have babbled nonsense.
Are we uncovering and describing a special set of facts?
No. You are too stupid.
Are we instead expressing emotional responses, or engaged in elaborate attempts to direct others’ behaviours – prescription rather than description?
No. You are shitting higher than your arsehole to earn a small amount of money.
These are typical alternatives. Behind some of these debates is a deeper divide between a picture in which we are discovering values and a picture in which we are constructing them.
A picture? Not even a cartoon! You guys are too fucking stupid and talentless.
Each side feels some pull from the other, and views often try to straddle or encompass both (the Kantian view holds, in effect, that we create values but there is only one way to do it that makes sense).
i.e. sometimes you try to piss as well as shit higher than your arsehole
A different view is that the whole practice of moral thinking is more mixed-up than these pictures suggest.
There are no pictures. This isn't even doodling. It's just some shite you throw together to earn a little money while child-minding morons.
Roughly speaking, we’re working out what to do, how to live, what policies we will encourage and discourage in ourselves and others.
No you are not. You are teaching retards who crave a credential and can't get one in anything useful by reason of stupidity or sociopathy
The activity is forward-looking in its function. But this sorting of ways we might do things is responsive to a wide range of factors – factual, emotive, structural.
But you stop doing it when you are sacked and discover everyone thinks you are a smelly homeless person- not a Professor at all.
A genealogical perspective can be helpful.
Only if actual sexual reproduction is involved.
Human projects, from many thousands of years in prehistory, have been social projects.
No. They have been 'games against nature'. Sociality only arises in that context.
Humans work together, and also try to influence each other – appraising, influencing, discouraging.
Why? They are playing a game against nature. If they lose, they die. Some other group carries forward the Species life.
Standards of behaviour, implicit and explicit, are largely responses to social life, especially to the benefits of cooperation and the temptations that lead to cooperation breaking down.
But social life is subject to 'games against nature' which, it must be said, may feature competition between, not just lineages but genes themselves. Behavior and norms can change quite quickly- more particularly in economically important fields.
Norms of this kind also become entangled with standards aimed at other kinds of behavioural regulation – ideals of purity, for example, as the US social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has emphasised – that are only indirectly related to cooperation and social order.
Nonsense! Covid has shown us that pathogen avoidance is directly implicated in coordination and discoordination games. The direct link between everything which has explanatory value in Social Science is that it plays a part in a 'game against nature'.
What begin as tacit expectations about others’ behaviour can later become explicit rules, stated and decreed. These then become enmeshed in further forms of regulation, with the rise of more hierarchical and coercive societies, priestly castes and theologies.
Where are they now? They have retreated to the margins.
But they can also be brought into contact with more subversive human capacities of reasoning and reflection. Theology might be sidelined or abandoned, and new conceptions of society can arise. Changes to our picture of the world won’t dictate new rules of behaviour, but can affect them, along with changing economic arrangements and the social problems of the day.
Fuck pictures of the world. Only games against nature matter. Succeed there and you can have any sort of picture in your head. Fail and your line goes extinct.
As moral responses become integrated into intellectual reflection, one thing that can affect them strongly is an ideal of parity: don’t treat similar cases entirely differently. If we treat this situation as bad, then we should do likewise here, as the two cases are similar in the ways that look important. When parity is massively flouted, rules look arbitrary and cannot be defended in debate. Parity is central to the pursuit of fairness, which isn’t everything in moral life, but is one major element.
The Jews came up with the notion of 'taku' and 'halachah vein morin kein' and so forth at the time of Moses & Zimri. Parity just means there is some sort of tie-breaking event which does not itself become part of the rule set.
Through this process of change, there remains a good deal of freedom at both individual and societal levels.
Does this cretin not get that rules are always wholly disregarded on one excuse or another? If there is no real penalty for breaking them, they don't really exist. But, if they exist, then it must be the case that there is a 'game against nature' where a superior 'correlated' 'separating equilibrium' exists requiring (for some) a costly signal.
We can choose how smoothly integrated with the rest of our thinking we want our moral orientation to be – some people don’t mind a fair bit of separation. Parity claims are dependent on which similarities between cases are seen as important and which are irrelevant; they depend on our rather flexible sense of what is similar to what. As another Harvard philosopher, John Rawls, argued, we are also continually balancing the appeal of general principles with the strong reactions we have to individual cases, and that balance can usually be achieved in a variety of ways.
Or not bothered with at all.
That is my rough picture. The point of the activity of moral judgment is forward-looking
no it isn't. It is backward looking. You did wrong. Your soul or reputation must take the hit.
– working out what to do
is an economic or technical exercise. It has nothing to do with 'moral judgments' though no doubt those can narrow the choice menu- which may be a good thing.
– but the ‘inputs’ at work are diverse, sensitive to factors such as parity and consistency, as well as empathy, reverence and more. The claims we make have a form that allows them to be applied retrospectively as well as in planning and persuasion, and the ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’ is not a category neatly marked out from the rest of the larger project of trying to work out what to do.
Yes it is. It is a restriction on the choice menu not a determinant of it.
How does all this apply to questions about our treatment of animals?
In the same way as it applies to our treatment of ourselves- it merely wastes our time
The situation is one where we are looking for ways to extend a framework that has been shaped primarily as a human social tool,
Fuck off! The reverse is the case. First small groups of hominids domesticated or otherwise systematically used animals. Only much later did you have shepherd-kings who in turn gave way to shepherds of souls.
into an area where we have new kinds of relationships to think about.
Like what? How to train your pet amoeba?
The problem has become urgent because of the building pressure of parity arguments,
What fucking 'pressure' builds when nutters demand equal pay for chickens and voting rights for whales?
because of new knowledge about what animal experience seems to be like,
'seems'? That's knowledge? Fuck off!
and perhaps also because of the extraordinary levels of control we have acquired over many animals in recent times,
e.g. the way in which we can get Fido to reprogram your i-phone so as to speak to flying saucers circling Sirius.
giving rise to a heightened sense that something has gone wrong.
Fido is actually Katy Perry. OMG! He licked my hand just the other day! I've got cooties! Fuck is wrong with this world?
When we try to resolve all this, and work out what to do, is it reasonable to expect that a single best course of action will become visible?
Yes. Shut the fuck up you stupid cunt. That's the best course of action.
It might – I’d not rule this out. But this might instead be a situation where we find a number of different reasonable paths forward, different ways to resolve the tensions.
Coz if Fido, who has put me in touch with aliens in flying saucers, is actually Katy Perry then masturbation aint gonna resolve my tensions the way it usually does. I need industrial strength anti-psychotics.
Classic moral theories such as utilitarianism, with definite rules and ways of ranking options, will be included in these paths, along with others a little more unkempt.
That will get you to Peter Singer type idiocy.
These paths will yield different pictures of what the ideal might be, the best place we could end up. Should we retain and reform animal farming, or end it altogether?
We have no such power. Why discuss the matter?
One vision of the ideal, extreme but seriously considered, is for humans to largely disengage from the lives of other animals.
And go live on flying saucers.
In this view, avoiding exploitation is a central goal and, although not all forms of entanglement of our lives with theirs are exploitative, a great many are. The ideal is then to let them be, with very few exceptions. Korsgaard’s view tends in this direction, though with companion animals explicitly ruled in – perhaps a slightly unkempt aspect of her own view. A different goal is for us to retain much more involvement in animal lives, including farming, but find ways to do this differently – to use our unique human powers in a way that is good, on balance, for both sides.
To be good you have to be useful. Utilitarianism is not useful. It is merely a pedagogic tool to bugger up the brains of youngsters who would otherwise be masturbating or mounting each other incessantly.
Suppose we do get used to the idea of a range of reasonable paths in this area. Is it possible to recover, within a framework like this, the idea that the worst excesses and cruelties – including some that are common in modern farming – are a kind of abomination or, in Korsgaard’s terms, a ‘moral atrocity’? Are there practices that we just have to change? If so, where does that ‘have to’ come from?
whosever anus it was pulled out of.
I do think some cases have a special status, which can be described as follows. The process of rethinking and reform I’m describing here can go in a number of different directions, but some kinds of mistreatment of animals are special, because on nearly any reasonable extension of our thinking, taking into account the facts on hand, we would reach the conclusion that we should stop doing these things. The fact that there is a good deal of leeway or elbow room in how concepts formed in human interaction might be extended to animals, and what our ultimate goal might be, does not always leave us unable to draw strong conclusions about particular cases. A conclusion such as the need to end factory farming can be a point of intersection or convergence across many different ways of extending our practices of moral evaluation.
But that won't change anything. Changing incentives, using fiscal policy and the State's regulatory powers, may do away with factory farming in a manner most voters agree is, on balance, beneficial. But to do so means sweating the small stuff- concentrating on what Blake called 'minute particulars', not gassing on about the 'General Good'.
The situations pictured also contain an incongruity to reflect on. The animals are in many cases presented as escapees from human misuse, which they are. But dignity in old age will also rather rarely be a feature of animal life in the wild. Some wild animals can approach this station – old sea turtles, serene in the water column, are beautiful to encounter in a way reminiscent of Leshko’s photos. Some birds and fish can get very old. For most mammals, it’s harder, especially relatives of the ones in Leshko’s book. For those animals, the possibility of a life of the kind pictured – reduced in powers, but at peace – is a product of human choice and intervention. This is the best side of the ‘custodial’ relationship that can exist between humans and nonhumans.
Fuck 'custodial' shite, affectionate relationships are the way to go. Peeps like animals who like them, or at least, who don't correct their grammar. Still, it may be that one way we could improve the lot of animals is to appoint them Professors of Philosophy. True, their lives may be made miserable by Grad Students trying to feed them dissertations, but it is better that animals do this than that our fellow human beings have to perform so bestial and degrading a function.
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