The moral status of a living, inanimate, or wholly imaginary thing is merely a matter of ipse dixit assertion or stipulation made for a particular purpose. It is important because it gives an indication of how a class of objects is likely to be treated by those who make or who are bound by the assertion.
Thus, the puppy is punished when it is bad just as Daddy is punished if he snatches and tries to eat the last of the chocolate eclairs. But imaginary or incompossible things- e.g. vampires (unless they have a soul because of a Gypsy's curse)- may have a moral status for a particular purpose. The 'intension' of 'moral status' has a well defined 'extension' for that particular purpose though, no doubt, the purpose can change, or the knowledge base can change, and so the extension changes as well. Thus, for Buffy, Vampires are bad. She must slay them. The exception is Angel, the vampire with a soul, because he isn't really a vampire. But, once Spike gets 'chipped' and can no longer attack humans, he can become one of the good guys if he serves the purposes of the Scoobies.
We understand all this by the time we are old enough to read Harry Potter or watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Lori Gruen, by employing cascading intensional fallacies, can write utter shite by ignoring this 'common knowledge' of ours
This is from her article in the Stanford Encylopaedia
The Moral Status of Animals
First published Tue Jul 1, 2003; substantive revision Mon Aug 12, 2024
Is there something distinctive about humanity that justifies the idea that humans have moral status while non-humans do not?
No. We say- 'this wine is bad. Pour it away' or 'this computer is fucking evil, mate. I'm going to take a fucking hammer to it.' If the boss makes a remark of this sort, you are careful to never buy bad wine or evil computers. Only a bad human would do so. You want to be a good human.
Providing an answer to this question has become increasingly important among philosophers as well as those outside of philosophy who are interested in our treatment of non-human animals.
The answer is obvious. If I dislike something and want others to dislike it, I seek to give it an 'intersubjective' moral status as 'bad' or 'uncool' or the fucking moral equivalent of Hitler's genocide or Israel's treatment of cuddly terrorists from Hamas.
For some, answering this question will enable us to better understand the nature of human beings and the proper scope of our moral obligations.
Human beings don't need a better understanding of this sort just as cats don't need to better understand what it is to be a cat. Chairs, on the other hand, would benefit from Doctoral research programs into why the Chair of the Department is so utterly shite.
Some argue that there is an answer that can distinguish humans from the rest of the natural world.
Those who do so find it difficult to distinguish between their Mummy and a marmot. Clearly, we must provide such feeble minded people with safe spaces on Ivy League campuses where they can speculate on why it was that Karl Marx failed to distinguish between Mums and marmosets- unless, he actually did so and a properly Lacanian reading of the Grundrisse can clarify our reception of Marsupial Third Wave Feminism which, as Vagina Dentata Choothopadhyaya has noted, throws the Barbie to the Shrimp God. It is a direct consequence of epistemic failure in this regard that so many honky ho-bags voted for Trump instead of Kamala.
Many of those who accept this answer are interested in justifying certain human practices towards non-humans—practices that cause pain, discomfort, suffering, and death.
They could be equally interested in justifying certain human practices to rocks, trees, planets, stars as well as imaginary or incompossible objects like flying unicorns.
The fact that many people are mad and prone to eat their own shit doesn't mean that Universities should grant tenure to cretins who 'justify' these practices.
It is not the case that philosophy has a 'moral status' as something good or bad. It is merely stupid and useless.
The fact is, it is utility itself which makes it useful to attribute 'moral status' to a class of objects. It is useful to say there is 'good' mathematics and 'bad' mathematics. But Philosophy is merely stupid and useless.
This latter group
who have shit for brains because they think 'justifying' stuff matters in any context other than a court of justice or that of a protocol based enterprise or institution. But even then, the thing depends on the incentive matrix which itself arises out of utilitarian mechanism design. It is mere sophistry- i.e. rhetoric- to speak of a thing as indefeasible when it is eminently so. You may as well believe in claims that hookers will love you long time.
expects that in answering the question in a particular way, humans will be justified
to whom? God? It is said that 12 just men- the lamed wufnik- justify the continued existence of Humanity to Jehovah. But they don't know each other or, indeed, what their own role is.
in granting moral consideration to other humans that is neither required nor justified when considering non-human animals.
If these boring shitheads granted any moral consideration to us, they'd fucking kill themselves. The plain fact is, you don't need University Departments to indoctrinate crazy nuisances. They arise spontaneously. The plain fact is it is immoral to eat anything other than your own shit. Even rock salt has feelings. How would you like it if you were ground up and then used to coat the rim of a Margarita glass?
In contrast to this view, an increasing number of philosophers have argued that while humans are different in a variety of ways from each other and other animals, these differences do not provide a philosophical defense for denying non-human animals moral consideration.
Why is Zelensky not providing a philosophical defence for his country? Why is he using guns and bullets to expel the invader and recover Ukrainian territory?
What the basis of moral consideration is and what it amounts to has been the source of much disagreement.
Amongst morons. The plain fact is that you can show great deference and respect to your chair or to a cockroach or to anything else. There can be umpteen philosophical or theological or aesthetic defences for doing so. But you may still be as mad as a hatter.
1. The Moral Considerability of Animals
To say that a being deserves moral consideration is to say
anything at all depending on the context and the intention of the speaker. Thus when somebody asks me to return money I borrowed from them, I say 'all beings- more particularly such flamingos as may be found at Lake Nakuru and which evince a desire to enter Punjabi politics as members of the Aaam Admi Party- deserve not just our moral consideration but also the donation of a crate of Jameson being delivered to me as a matter of urgency.' This statement of mine done not mean
that there is a moral claim that this being can make on those who can recognize such claims.
On the contrary, it only means that claims- even in law- may be utterly silly and inconsequential and yet stir up shitheads to furious debate.
A morally considerable being is a being who can be wronged.
I like my chair. It has served me faithfully, these many years. I feel it is wronged when you sit on it- you big fatty, you.
It is often thought that because only humans can recognize moral claims, it is only humans who are morally considerable.
Babies and lunatics are 'morally considerable'. But so are our dogs and cats and cattle and certain chattels- like my favourite chair.
However, when we ask why we think human animals are the only types of beings that can be morally wronged,
we don't think any such thing. I can't morally wrong Mother Theresa even if I call her a whore or rape or kill her. No act of mine can touch her. You may say, 'The Pope could have morally wronged her by falsely accusing her of disobedience or lack of chastity.' But, this is not actually the case. The Pope would have done wrong but he lacked the capacity to morally or otherwise wrong Mother Theresa. Even if I believed that Christianity is a false religion and that the True God has consigned her to the depths of Hell, I can't say she has been wronged. All I can say is that I think the outcome unfair.
we begin to see that the class of beings able to recognize moral claims and the class of beings who can suffer moral wrongs are not co-extensive. A variety of types of morally relevant factors have been invoked to to justify who is morally considerable.
Which is like deciding who is worthy of being included in the telephone directory. The plain fact is I can get a phone for my cat or my chair and then they will have to be included in the directory.
1.1 Speciesism
The view that only humans should be morally considered is sometimes referred to as “speciesism”.
Whereas the view that only chairs should be morally considered is sometimes referred to as equally stupid.
In the 1970s, Richard Ryder coined this term while campaigning in Oxford to denote a ubiquitous type of human centered prejudice, which he thought was similar to racism.
Why does my cat not have the vote? It it coz it iz bleck?
He objected to favoring one’s own species, while exploiting or harming members of other species.
He was harming or exploiting his students. They belonged to his own species.
Peter Singer popularized the term and focused on the way speciesism, without moral justification, favors the interests of humans:
Speciesm, like other types of stupidity, can only harm humans, not cats or chairs.
'the racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race,
That's not a racist. That's just kin selective altruism. A racist thinks guys belonging to another race are inferior or that they can be safely attacked or exploited.
when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race.
So, Nelson Mandela was a racist because the interests of his race clashed with that of the Whites in South Africa.
Similarly the speciesist allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is the same in each case. (Singer 1974: 108)
No. The racist may not do shit for his own race , or indeed, he may actively harm it, while holding it to be superior to another race. He may have no opinion about whose interests override those of others. Indeed, few of us do. There is no point to such an exercise.
The fact is, my interests override those of everybody else's for me. I may pretend that I greatly care about others but this is mere pretence.
Discrimination based on race, like discrimination based on species is thought to be prejudicial, because these are not factors that matter when it comes to making moral claims.
Yes they are. Kamala Harris certainly made such claims on behalf of coloured peeps- more particularly those who have to sit down to pee. Similarly, when your typical Indian leftie says 'the dogs of the rich are fed delicious morsels of meat while us workers and peasants can't even afford daal.' Racist and Speciesist claims are common on the Left. Yet, the fact is, we think our cow or our cat is more important that some guy who wants to eat them. There is an 'uncorrelated asymmetry' which dictates a bourgeois strategy such that we protect what is our own or closer to us in 'oikeiosis' or better serves our interests. As Maynard Smith showed, bourgeois strategies are eusocial. Talking virtue signalling bollocks is useless.
Speciesist actions and attitudes are prejudicial because there is no prima facie reason for preferring the interests of beings belonging to the species group to which one also belongs over the interests of those who don’t.
Only in the sense that there is no reason to wipe your own arse rather than go around wiping the arses of everybody else.
That humans are considered to be members of the species Homo sapiens — humans share a genetic make-up and a distinctive physiology, we all emerge from a human pregnancy — is unimportant from the moral point of view.
Only if that point of view thinks it immoral that people don't wipe other people's arses while being scrupulous in so doing when it comes to their own arse or that of their baby.
Species membership is morally irrelevant, a bit of luck that is no more morally interesting than being born in Malaysia or Canada.
Or the fact that your arse is attached to your body and, if you don't wipe it, will smell like shit and soil your underwear. The plain fact is, morality- notions of good and bad, virtue and vice- have evolved to serve a useful purpose- e.g. inculcating good habits, like keeping your bum clean rather than stinking up the place wherever you go.
It thus cannot serve as the basis for a view that holds that our species deserves moral consideration that is not owed to members of other species.
Peter Singer wipes his own bum. Why does he not wipe the bum of various wallabies? Is it coz he is a Speciesist?
As Oscar Horta (2022) and others have noted, speciesism is not only an individual attitude that some humans hold, but is a “collective phenomenon” that springs from ideological commitments that are generated within and shape institutions and social structures.
Ideological commitments are what prevents Horta from coming to wipe my bum, though he wipes his own bum and, no doubt, those of various Spanish burros.
Since membership in a species category is largely socially determined,
Very true. Did you know that Queen Victoria elevated a giraffe to the House of Lords? True, the giraffe had previously been received in the best social circles, still, it did raise eyebrows at that time because the giraffe looked a bit Jewy.
analyzing the meanings of category membership can help illuminate further problems with speciesism.
Nothing can illuminate the dung-heap that is the mind of these shitheads.
The social meanings of categories structure not only the institutions we operate within but also how we conceptualize ourselves and our world.
No one knows the 'social meaning' of anything though, no doubt, they can ascribe one to whatever they like. Is the institution of marriage one which creates a Heaven, or a Hell, on Earth? Different people may have a different view, or the same people may have different views at various times.
Humans have developed moral systems as well as a wide range of other valuable practices, and by creating these systems, we separate the human from the rest of the animal kingdom.
Very true. Our species developed moral systems and then decided it was moral to eat omelettes. This caused us to condemn hens to laying eggs. Why were they not permitted to pursue careers in Actuarial Science instead? The answer, obviously, has to do with Neo-Liberalism.
But the category “human” itself is morally contested.
only in the sense that the practice of eating your own shit is morally contested.
Some argue, for example, that racism is not simply, or even primarily about discrimination and prejudice, but rather a mechanism of dehumanizing blackness so as to provide the conditions that make humans white (see Fanon 1967; Jackson 2020; Kim 2015; Ko & Ko 2017).
Fanon was a soldier in the Second World War. He very well knew that White Jews had been more thoroughly 'dehumanized' by Vichy nutters than those of African heritage. Admittedly, this was because there was a notion that us darkies like plucking cotton or cutting cane in return for some nice bananas or watermelons.
According to this line of thought, speciesism isn’t focused on discrimination or prejudice but is a central tool for creating human (and white) supremacy or exceptionalism.
Which is why, if you don't want to be thought of as a Nazi, you should marry a goat.
No comments:
Post a Comment