Abominable Advertising

I was horrified to visit this blog this morning and see the advertisements at the top of the page. They may or may not be there now, as you read this. Here's what I found:

Certified Angus Beef Filets, strips, prime rib and more delivered right to your door.

Great Steakhouse Steaks Allen Brothers - Since 1893 Serve/Give USDA Prime this holiday!

I'm pretty sure the ads are computer-generated. Software probably scans the blog to see what it's "about," then inserts ads it thinks are appropriate. Since beef has been mentioned on this blog many times, it probably thinks it's a beef-celebration site! I don't know what to do about this. I've been trying to upgrade both of my blogs (the other being AnalPhilosopher) to get rid of the advertising at the top, but Blogspot is not taking upgrade orders. As soon as it resumes taking orders, I will upgrade (for a fee) and get rid of the obnoxious and inappropriate advertising. I'm sorry if it ruined your day, as it did mine.

R. G. Frey on Taking Morality Seriously

A presumption of those who urge the boycott of meat on moral grounds is that, if they can obtain our agreement that eating meat is wrong, we shall change our diet accordingly. They presume, that is, that we take morality seriously and so are concerned to behave according to our moral beliefs. For it is not merely a change in our views about meat-eating but also a change in our diet or eating practices which they seek.

The overwhelming majority of us not only eat meat but also very much enjoy it; if our present diet is to be changed, therefore, the case for changing it is going to have to be powerful enough to overcome our great love of meat dishes. This does not entail that the case in question will be a moral one; but unless we are in some way compelled to become vegetarians, it is difficult to think of a more powerful case than a moral one to effect the desired change, given that this case must breast the current of our enormous liking for meat. Obviously, the power of such a case, as I have said, depends upon our taking morality seriously, since only if we do so can moral claims hope to overcome our love of meat.

Importantly, the aim of those who urge the boycott of meat on moral grounds, of, that is, moral vegetarians, is not necessarily to rid us of our liking of meat (though doubtless they hope this will come in time) but to have us abstain from meat, even if we persist in liking it.

(R. G. Frey, Rights, Killing, and Suffering: Moral Vegetarianism and Applied Ethics [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983], 3-4)

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

In "The Cow Jumped Over the U.S.D.A." (Op-Ed, Jan. 2), Eric Schlosser suggests that the United States Department of Agriculture promote beef while a new agency ensures safety.

That is a terrible idea. It is because of the agency's vigilance that the United States has avoided until recently a case of mad cow disease. And when the case arose, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman and the experts at her disposal were able to prevent wide distribution of the meat, as well as public hysteria. The U.S.D.A. took extraordinary precaution by issuing the recall of the meat and has begun putting further safeguards into effect.

Mr. Schlosser tries to scare people away from fast-food restaurants by saying they rely on dairy cattle, which are at highest risk for the disease. But as the author of "Fast Food Nation," he should know that chains like McDonald's and Wendy's do not buy beef from "downer" cattle.

BOB STALLMAN
President
American Farm Bureau Federation
Washington, Jan. 2, 2004

Spam Haikus

Bluish can of steel
What promise do you hold?
Salty flesh so ripe

Can of metal, slick
Soft center, so cool, moistening
I yearn for your salt

Twist, pull the sharp lid
Jerks and cuts me deeply but
Spam, aah, my poultice

Silent former pig
One communal awareness
Myriad pink bricks

Clad in metal, proud
No mere salt curing for you
You are not bacon

And who dares mock Spam?
You? you? you are not worthy
Of one rich pink fleck

Like some spongy rock
A granite, my piece of Spam
Sunlight on my plate

Little slab of meat
In a wash of clear jelly
Now I heat the pan

Oh tin of pink meat
I ponder what you may be:
Sphincter, ear or snout?

In the cool morning
I fry up a slab of Spam
A dog barks next door

Pink tender morsel
Glistening with salty gel
What the hell is it?

Ears, snouts and innards
A homogeneous mass
Pass another slice

Old man seeks doctor
"I eat Spam daily," he says.
Angioplasty

Hardly natural
Tortured shape, elastic food
A small pink coffin

Pink beefy temptress
I can no longer remain
Vegetarian

Ambrose Bierce

Dog, n. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship. This Divine Being in some of his smaller and silkier incarnations, takes, in the affection of Woman, the place to which there is no human male aspirant. The Dog is a survival—an anachronism. He toils not, neither does he spin, yet Solomon in all his glory never lay upon a door-mat all day long, sun-soaked and fly-fed and fat, while his master worked for the means wherewith to purchase an idle wag of the Solomonic tail, seasoned with a look of tolerant recognition.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

The Beef Industry

This story accompanied the survey reported below.

From Today's New York Times Magazine

Are you eating less beef since the mad-cow scare?

Yes: 72%
No: 28%

This informal survey and its results are not scientific and reflect the opinions of only those who have chosen to participate.

Ambrose Bierce

Man, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Jack Turner on Preferring the Wild

I am on the side of the grizzly sow and her two cubs in the south fork of Snowshoe Canyon; the mountain lion who tracked my favorite Escalante hollow; the raven cooing at me while I shave on my porch; the ticks that cling to me each spring when I climb Blacktail Butte; the Glover's silk moth fighting the window pane; the pack rat that lives in my sleeping cave on the saddle between the Grand and Middle Tetons and scurries across my sleeping bag at night; the wind roaring in the mountains; the persistent virus that knocked me down this winter; the crystalline light that greets me when I step outdoors; the starry sky. I see no need to apologize for my preferences any more than those who prefer modern urban culture apologize for their preferences. As Thoreau said, there are enough champions of civilization. What we need now is a culture that deeply loves the wild earth.

(Jack Turner, The Abstract Wild [Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1996], xvii)

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

"Where the Cows Come Home: Sanctuary Farm Applauds Ban on Butchering of Sick Animals" (news article, Jan. 2):

I applaud the Farm Sanctuary for educating the public on the cruelty of factory farming. It is sad that it takes human beings' getting sick for us to see the madness of farm animal abuse.

As a vegan, I feel secure that I won't develop mad cow disease. But the real reason I don't eat meat is the torture of these gentle animals their entire lives. I just can't stomach that.

LAURA FRISK
Encinitas, Calif., Jan. 3, 2004

Do Fish Feel Pain?

I received the following letter:

While I admire Richard Swinburne a great deal as a philosopher, he probably needs a fact checker when he speaks outside his discipline. Fish brains are like human brains only in the most basic of senses. For Swinburne to say that fish feel pain is simply not something that is strongly supported by science. This year's study by the Roslin Institute and the University of Edinburgh is the first I know of to even suggest that fish may feel pain. Yet this study follows on the heels of one by James D Rose, a professor of zoology and physiology at the University of Wyoming, published in the American journal Reviews of Fisheries Science, which concluded that awareness of pain depends on functions of specific regions of the cerebral cortex which fish do not possess.

To which I replied:

David DeGrazia summarizes the research on pages 108-12 of Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996]. "To conclude," he writes, "given the convergence of various kinds of evidence, it is parsimonious to attribute pain, and consciousness generally, to most or all vertebrate species and probably at least some invertebrates such as cephalopods" (page 111). I think Swinburne, who, by the way, studied philosophy of science for ten years before doing philosophy of religion, comes to the same conclusion.

Make up your own mind.

Richard Swinburne on Animal Souls

At which stage of the evolutionary process did animals first start to have souls and so a mental life? We do not know. But fairly clearly their behaviour shows that the mammals do have a mental life. My view is that all the vertebrates have a mental life, because they all have a brain similar to the human brain, which, we know, causes a mental life in us, and their behaviour, too, is best explained in terms of their having feelings and beliefs. Dogs and birds and fish all feel pain. But there is no reason at all to attribute a mental life to viruses and bacteria, nor in my view to ants and beetles. They do not have the kind of brain which we do, nor do we need to attribute feelings and beliefs to them in order to explain their behaviour. It follows that at some one particular moment in evolutionary history there appeared something utterly new—consciousness, a mental life, to be analysed in terms of souls having mental properties.

The reluctance of so many philosophers and scientists to admit that at a particular moment of evolutionary history there came into existence, connected to animal bodies, souls with mental properties seems to me to be due in part to the fact that, if such a thing happened, they are utterly lost for an explanation of how it came to happen. But it is highly irrational to say that something is not there, just because you cannot explain how it came to be there. We should accept the evident fact; and if we cannot explain it, we must just be humble and acknowledge that we are not omniscient. But I am going on to suggest that, although there cannot be an inanimate explanation, of the kind characteristic of the natural sciences, of the occurrence of souls and their mental life, the theist does have an explanation.

(Richard Swinburne, Is There a God? [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], 79-80)

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re "Mad Cow Forces Beef Industry to Change Course" (front page, Jan. 5):

Was it really too much to expect the beef industry to exclude sick, non-ambulatory cows from our food supply a long time ago, before the government forced it to do that?

The industry's greed has killed the goose that laid the golden egg. I may never enjoy a hamburger again.

GEORGE ALMASI
Katonah, N.Y., Jan. 5, 2004

Tom Regan on Why Christians Should Be Vegans

I take the opening account of creation in Genesis seriously, but not, I hasten to add, literally. I take it seriously because I believe this is the point from which our spiritual understanding of God's plans in and hopes for creation must begin, and against which our well-considered judgments about the value of creation finally must be tested. It is therefore predictable that I find it significant that God is said to judge each part of creation "good" before humans came upon the scene and that humans were created by God (or came upon the scene) on the same day as the nonhuman animals to whom I have been referring—those whose limbs are severed, whose sensory organs are brutally removed, and whose brains are ground up for purposes of scientific research, for example. I read in this representation of the order of creation a prescient recognition of the vital kinship humans share with these other animals, a kinship I have elsewhere endeavored to explicate in terms of our shared biographical presence in the world, a view which, quite apart from anything the Bible teaches, is supported by both common sense and our best science.

But I find in the opening saga of creation an even deeper, more profound message regarding God's plans in and hopes for creation. For I find in this account the unmistakable message that God did not create nonhuman animals for our use—not in science, not for the purpose of vanity products, not for our entertainment, not for our sport or recreation, not even for our bodily sustenance. On the contrary, the nonhuman animals currently exploited in these ways were created to be just what they are: independently good expressions of the divine love that, in ways that are likely always to remain to some degree mysterious to us, was expressed in God's creative activity.

The issue of bodily sustenance is perhaps the most noteworthy of the practices I have mentioned since, while humans from "the beginning" were in need of food, there were no rodeos or circuses, no leghold traps or dynamite harpoons in the original creation. Had it been part of God's hopes in and plans for creation to have humans use nonhuman animals as food, it would have been open to God to let this be known. And yet what we find in the opening saga of creation is just the opposite. The "meat" we are given by God is not the flesh of animals, it is "all plants that bear seed everywhere on the earth, and every tree bearing fruit which yields seed: they shall be yours for food" (Gen. 1:29 [NEB]).

The message could not be any clearer. In the most perfect state of creation humans are vegans (that is, not only is the flesh of animals excluded from the menu God provides for us, even animal products—milk and cheese, for example—are excluded). And so I believe that, if we look to the biblical account of "the beginning" as more than merely one among many considerations, but instead as an absolutely essential source of spiritual insight into God's hopes in and plans for creation, then, like it or not, we are obliged to find there a menu of divinely approved bodily sustenance that differs quite markedly from the steaks and chops, the roasts and stews most Christians are accustomed to devouring.

(Tom Regan, "Christians Are What Christians Eat," chap. 8 in his The Thee Generation: Reflections on the Coming Revolution [Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991], 143-57, at 149-50 [italics in original] [essay first published in 1990])

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) on Moral Patienthood

IV. What other agents then are there, which, at the same time that they are under the influence of man's direction, are susceptible of happiness? They are of two sorts: 1. Other human beings who are styled persons. 2. Other animals, which, on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class of things. [footnote 1]

[footnote 1] Under the Gentoo and Mahometan religions, the interests of the rest of the animal creation seem to have met with some attention. Why have they not, universally, with as much as those of human creatures, allowance made for the difference in point of sensibility? Because the laws that are have been the work of mutual fear; a sentiment which the less rational animals have not had the same means as man has of turning to account. Why ought they not? No reason can be given. If the being eaten were all, there is very good reason why we should be suffered to eat such of them as we like to eat: we are the better for it, and they are never the worse. They have none of those long-protracted anticipations of future misery which we have. The death they suffer in our hands commonly is, and always may be, a speedier, and by that means a less painful one, than that which would await them in the inevitable course of nature. If the being killed were all, there is very good reason why we should be suffered to kill such as molest us: we should be the worse for their living, and they are never the worse for being dead. But is there any reason why we should be suffered to torment them? Not any that I can see. Are there any why we should not be suffered to torment them? Yes, several. See B. I. tit. [Cruelty to animals]. The day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

(Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, The Hafner Library of Classics, Number Six [New York: Hafner Press, 1948 (first published in 1789; this is the 1823 edition)], chap. XVII, sec. 1, subsec. IV, pp. 310-1 [italics and third set of brackets in original; footnote within footnote omitted])

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Testing sick or slaughtered animals for mad cow disease (news articles, Jan. 1) is closing the door after the horse is out of the barn. The only way to protect our food supply is to ban the use of animals as food for other animals. Beef brains and lower intestines are not routinely sold for human consumption, but they are ground up for use in feed for other animals. It is still common practice to feed dead cattle to pigs and chickens and vice versa. Now that we have a case of mad cow confirmed, it is very possible that infected cow remains from this or other undetected diseased cows have already been fed to pigs and chickens. Consumers who feel safer switching from beef to pork or chicken are in for a rude awakening.

JEAN STANFORD
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Jan. 1, 2004

Do Plants Have Rights?

Believe it or not, I wrote a term paper with that title in a graduate philosophy course at Wayne State University (while I was in law school). The professor, Bruce Russell, must have thought I was crazy, but he allowed me to do it, for which I am grateful. Today I received an interesting e-mail from Steve Walsh, who gave me permission to reproduce it here (with his name):

Professor Burgess-Jackson, I've just begun reading at the Animal Ethics blog and am writing in the hope that you can point me in the right direction. Intrigued by some of the posts about vegetarianism, veganism, and the other general attempts to persuade against eating meat, I am curious to find more writing on this topic, but with a specific idea in mind. I've always thought of the various forms of life as a sort of linear continuum: amoebas at one end and human beings at the other. Along the way we have bacteria, virus, fungus, plants, insects, and animals; more or less in that order from lesser (left) to higher (right). We (I?) distinguish these different forms by such things as sentience (perceived), self-consciousness, communication ability, mobility, and appearance. With this in mind I have always evaluated the morality of killing from a very simple point of view: everything to the right of the animals (ie; humans) is morally unacceptable and everything to the left of humans is morally okay. Whether I actually kill things (directly or indirectly) depends on my perceived utility of doing so. Thus using disinfectants to kill bacteria, taking anti-viral medications, using anti-fungal solvents has never been a problem. My killing of insects & other critters depends on whether they are being a nuisance or otherwise serving no immediate purpose (mosquitoes, spiders, bees, ants, rodents). With my continuum in mind, the question, in a couple of different forms, that I am trying to answer is this: what is the difference between killing animals and plants for food? What is the difference between killing animals for food and killing bacteria to prevent illness? I know you get a ton of mail but if you could suggest some reading on this topic I would appreciate it. Regards, Steve

Thanks for writing, Steve. Your question is a good one. Here is how philosophers put it: Which entities have moral status, and why? Assuming that some entities have moral status and others do not, what's the morally relevant difference? What is it that all the entities with moral status have that all the entities without moral status lack?

For some philosophers, the morally relevant difference is sentience, or the capacity to suffer. This is Peter Singer's view. He says that being sentient is both necessary and sufficient for having interests. (In other words, the class of sentient beings and the class of beings with interests is the same class.) Compare a stone and a mouse. There is nothing I can do to the stone that matters to it. It can't feel pain. It can't be deprived of liberty. But a mouse can feel pain, and pain is bad, so what I do to the mouse matters to it. Since the mouse has interests (specifically, an interest in not suffering), it has moral status. This is not to say that the mouse has the same interests as a human. I have an interest in participating in the political system. The mouse does not, since it cannot. Also, I'm a moral agent. The mouse is a moral patient. It can be acted on, morally, but cannot act, morally. I am responsible for my conduct in a way that a mouse is not. Strictly speaking, I am both a moral agent and a moral patient. The mouse is only a moral patient.

Since plants are not sentient, they lack interests, according to Singer. He devotes two pages of Animal Liberation to the topic. The reason he addresses it is to cut off a certain objection to the idea that nonhuman animals have moral status. Someone might reason as follows:

1. If nonhuman animals have moral status, then so do plants.

2. If plants have moral status, then humans will (have to) starve.

Therefore,

3. If nonhuman animals have moral status, then humans will (have to) starve (from 1 and 2).

4. It can't be the case that humans will (have to) starve.

Therefore,

5. Nonhuman animals do not have moral status (from 3 and 4).

Singer rejects 5, so, since the inferences appear to be valid, he must reject one or more of the premises: 1, 2, or 4. He rejects 1. (This is not to say that he accepts 2; he could reject it as well.) Nonhuman animals can have moral status even though plants (and perhaps some rudimentary animals, such as oysters, worms, and insects) do not. The difference, as I said, is sentience. "There is no reliable evidence that plants are capable of feeling pleasure or pain" (Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2d ed. [New York: The New York Review of Books, 1990], 235).

Singer goes on to ask what would follow if we became convinced that plants feel pain. It wouldn't follow that we must starve. What would follow is that we should minimize the amount of pain we cause in the course of preserving our lives. Since plants would presumably feel less pain than nonhuman animals, we would have a moral obligation to eat plants instead of animals. Indeed, if we truly cared about plants, he said, we would give up meat, which requires far more plants than we would need if we ate the plants directly. Meat is wasteful.

Singer's view is not the only view. Another is that plants, like animals, have moral status (even rights, provided we understand the concept properly). Not because they're sentient, but because they have a good of their own. Here is Paul W. Taylor:

Once we separate the objective value concept of a being's good from subjective value concepts, there is no problem about understanding what it means to benefit or harm a plant, to be concerned about its good, and to act benevolently toward it. We can intentionally act with the aim of helping a plant to grow and thrive, and we can do this because we have genuine concern for its well-being. As moral agents we might think of ourselves as under an obligation not to destroy or injure a plant. We can also take the standpoint of a plant and judge what happens to it as being good or bad from its standpoint. To do this would involve our using as the standard of evaluation the preservation or promotion of the plant's own good. Anyone who has ever taken care of flowers, shrubs, or trees will know what these things mean. (Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986], 67-8)

As the title of Taylor's book suggests, he advocates an attitude of respect for nature: for each living organism (animal or plant) as well as for entire populations and biotic communities. Actions are right to the extent that (and only to the extent that) they express or embody this "ultimate moral attitude" (page 84).

Now obviously something must give, for if every living organism has an inherent worth that must be respected, and if respect means not killing or using an organism, then no human will survive. (Remember: Nonhuman animals are not moral agents, so they are not morally responsible for what they do. The question is how humans should conduct themselves.) So Taylor must provide rules that minimize and resolve conflicts between organisms. Here are his four rules:

1. Nonmaleficence. This prohibits the doing of harm.

2. Noninterference. This requires us to leave organisms and ecosystems alone.

3. Fidelity. This forbids humans to break trust with individual animals (by hunting them, for example).

4. Restitutive justice. This requires restoration of the "balance of justice" when one of the previous rules has been broken.

Taylor goes on to provide priority rules for when these first-order rules conflict. Rule 1, for example, takes priority over the others. This is similar to the medical injunction, primum non nocere (first, do no harm).

Conflicts between organisms are inevitable. As Taylor puts it, "Not only must humans make use of the natural environment and thereby compete with animals and plants that might also need that environment as their habitat and food source, but humans must also directly consume some nonhumans in order to survive" (page 257). So Taylor rejects premise 2 of the argument presented earlier. The person who adopts an attitude of respect for nature (called biocentrism) will not automatically prefer the interests of humans to the interests of other organisms (called anthropocentrism). He or she will strive to accommodate all interests. This will mean limiting human population, reducing consumption, and being wise in the use of technology. Biocentrism sees humans as just another species, with no special claim on the earth's resources.

It might be thought that this leaves us where we were, with humans doing as they please. It does not. Most people say that nonhuman animals and plants have no moral status, whereas humans do. Taylor says that all organisms have moral status. This shifts the burden to those who would harm other organisms. What didn't need justification now needs justification. Most people are anthropocentrists. Taylor's biocentrism would require vast changes in our lives and in society. Compare the changes in thought, attitude, and behavior toward slaves before and after they were freed. Before they were freed, certain things could be done to them with impunity. After they were freed, these things could not be done. Becoming a member of the legal or moral community makes a great deal of difference to how one is (may be) treated.

I haven't begun to plumb the depths of Taylor's fine book. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in this topic.

James Rachels (1941-2003) on Peter Singer

The impact of Peter Singer's writing is due as much to his gift for moral rhetoric as to the quality of his arguments. Reading his 1972 paper 'Famine, Affluence, and Morality,' one felt intellectual interest in the argument, but also guilt for not having contributed more money to relieve starvation. Many otherwise sober citizens, after reading his 1975 book Animal Liberation, became vegetarians. It is difficult to say just how this effect is achieved. There is no preaching; somehow a sense of moral urgency is conveyed through the statement of the theoretical arguments themselves. I know of no other writer whose work combines intellectual analysis and moral persuasion so compellingly.

(James Rachels, "Sociobiology and the 'Escalator' of Reason," review of The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology, by Peter Singer, The Hastings Center Report 11 [October 1981]: 45-6, at 45)

Wikipedia

Here is the entry on Peter Singer from Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Here is the entry on PETA.

Criticism

One thing that distinguishes philosophers from activists is that philosophers criticize each other. They do not suppress criticism for the sake of "solidarity." Peter Singer and Tom Regan have criticized each other's work for almost three decades. This is good; it shows that they are first and foremost philosophers and only secondarily activists. Gary Francione criticizes Singer, Regan, and everyone else (including PETA) who is well-intentioned but is in fact doing harm to animals. Francione's only goal is doing right by the animals. If he thinks PETA is harming animals but doesn't say so—and explain why—he is not a true philosopher. No self-respecting philosopher would be either a member or a defender of PETA. PETA is an organization, with all the faults and foibles of an organization. Philosophers must remain independent.