From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

“What’s Next in the Law? The Unalienable Rights of Chimps,” by Adam Cohen (Editorial Observer, July 14), unfairly characterized PETA’s efforts.

Few people know the depth of our work, as it is mostly our stunts that make the news. While cruelty to animals is a serious matter that should elicit widespread public outrage, efforts to reach the public through more serious means often fall on deaf ears in a world in which sex sells and there are both a war and an economic downturn.

By comparing the common mind-set that has produced both the past injustices against humans and the current abuses of animals, we can and do inspire debate and convince many people that it is a human obligation to speak out against injustice to all beings.

Animal suffering and human suffering are undeniably interconnected. In 2004, for example, The New York Times broke the story about a PETA undercover investigation that found routine animal abuse at AgriProcessors kosher slaughterhouse. Since then, the paper has repeatedly reported on the abuse of migrant workers at AgriProcessors. It should come as no surprise that a facility that profits from tormenting and killing animals would also oppress and abuse humans.

Those of us who have worked in the field as social service staff members or humane law enforcement officers know that child abuse and animal abuse as well as battered women and battered companion animals are often found under the same roof.

Forgive us our bikinis and our shock tactics, but our message that all beings—both human and nonhuman—deserve compassion and respect is one that we must work hard to make heard.

Ingrid E. Newkirk
President, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Norfolk, Va., July 15, 2008

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Cholesterol Drugs for 8-Year-Olds” (editorial, July 10):

Eight-year-olds do not need to be put on cholesterol drugs. Cholesterol levels can be controlled by eating healthy food and getting exercise.

Humans, and most animals, produce cholesterol naturally, but the problem is when we “supplement” this biologically occurring substance.

Cholesterol is found only in foods derived from animals, like meat, cheese and eggs. All food that comes from plants is cholesterol-free, so a vegetarian or vegan diet does wonders for lowering cholesterol levels.

I suppose you can say that I started to control my cholesterol level 17 years ago when I was a young woman. That is when I went vegetarian. My cholesterol levels have always made my doctors happy. I’ll take a veggie burger over a handful of pills any day.

Anna West
Richmond, Va., July 10, 2008

Peter Singer on the Moral Significance of Self-Consciousness

Preference utilitarians count the killing of a being with a preference for continued life as worse than the killing of a being without any such preference. Self-conscious beings therefore are not mere receptacles for containing a certain quantity of pleasure, and are not replaceable.

To take the view that non-self-conscious beings are replaceable is not to say that their interests do not count. I have elsewhere argued that their interests do count. As long as a sentient being is conscious, it has an interest in experiencing as much pleasure and as little pain as possible. Sentience suffices to place a being within the sphere of equal consideration of interests; but it does not mean that the being has a personal interest in continuing to live. For a non-self-conscious being, death is the cessation of experiences, in much the same way that birth is the beginning of experiences. Death cannot be contrary to a preference for continued life, any more than birth could be in accordance with a preference for commencing life. To this extent, with non-self-conscious life, birth and death cancel each other out; whereas with self-conscious beings the fact that once self-conscious one may desire to continue living means that death inflicts a loss for which the birth of another is insufficient gain.

(Peter Singer, "Killing Humans and Killing Animals," Inquiry 22 [summer 1979]: 145-56, at 152 [endnote omitted])

Note from KBJ: Singer is making a distinction within the class of sentient beings. Those that are self-conscious are not replaceable, whereas those that are non-self-conscious are replaceable. Suppose pigs are non-self-conscious. Then painlessly killing a pig while replacing it with another, equally happy pig is not wrong. Suppose humans are self-conscious. Then painlessly killing a human (specifically: one who desires to continue living) while replacing it with another, equally happy human is wrong. Note that this distinction does not make Singer a speciesist, since it is not species that makes the difference. It is self-consciousness. While self-consciousness may be correlated with species, it is not identical to it. Self-consciousness is morally significant; species, like race or sex, is not.

Animal Companions

Here is an interesting blog post.

John Rodman on Theriophobia

More common in Western thought than theriophilia has been theriophobia, the fear and hatred of beasts as wholly or predominantly irrational, physical, insatiable, violent, or vicious beings whom man strangely resembles when he is being wicked. Thus in a state of nature "man is a wolf to man" (Hobbes). A society founded on the principle of satisfying appetites is "a city of pigs" (Plato). The basic theriophobic stance is one of disgust at "brutish", "bestial", or "animalistic" traits that are suspiciously more frequently predicted of men than of beasts, just as the types of behavior in which these traits are exhibited (egoism, insatiable greed, insatiable sexuality, cruelty, the gratuitous slaughter of other species, and the mass extermination of one's own species) are more frequently observed on the part of men than of beasts.

Theriophobia appears to be compounded of two major elements: man's disgust with his own body and appetites ("certainly man is of kin to the beasts, by his body; and, if he be not kin to God, by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature"—Bacon); and man's anxiety stemming from the loss of inhibitions (e.g., against the killing of one's own species) normal to other animal species. The well-spring of theriophobia is thus fear of self, and its central mechanism is projection. In the most alienated form of theriophobia, the beasts themselves were seen as animated by devils, and man's extermination of the beasts and of "savages" (bestial men) was carried on as part of God's war against Satan.

(John Rodman, "The Dolphin Papers," The North American Review 259 [spring 1974]: 13-26, at 20 [footnotes omitted])

Note from KBJ: Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) famously wrote that life in the state of nature is (or would be) "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short." Brutish = of the brutes. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) defended utilitarianism from the charge that, because it exalts pleasure, it is "a doctrine worthy only of swine." He also said that "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied." Can you think of other such examples in the history of philosophy?

Animal Rights

I've been reading the literature of animal rights for nearly three decades, and contributing to it for the past decade or so. This New York Times column has to rank as the worst thing I've read. The author fails to distinguish legal rights from moral rights, fails to distinguish the question whether animals do have legal rights from the question whether they should have legal rights, fails to analyze the concept of a right (i.e., fails to tell his readers what it is to have a right), fails to distinguish between positive rights and negative rights, and in general glosses over all the important questions, philosophical and otherwise. To make things worse, the column is badly written. In parts, it's incomprehensible. Yuck.

Leonard Nelson (1882-1927) on Interspecific Justice

Our analysis must not be misinterpreted as an attempt to champion altruism in relation to animals. It merely reaffirms the principle of justice. That is why there can be no general philosophical injunction that we subordinate our interests to those of animals under any circumstances. Each time we are confronted with a conflict between our own and an animal's interest, we must decide, after making fair allowance for each, which of the two interests deserves to be given preference. Thus it may well be permitted to injure an animal's interest in order to avoid injuring a preponderant interest of our own; but at the same time a limit is set to the extent of the injury, which is permitted only under condition that an actual conflict is involved—this must be proved separately in each case. After such proof has been supplied, we must ask further on which side lies the preponderant interest. In no event is it permissible to regard the animal's interest as inferior without good reason, and to proceed to injure it.

(Leonard Nelson, System of Ethics, trans. Norbert Guterman [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956], 142 [first published in German in 1932])

John Passmore (1914-2004) on the Mediaeval View of Animals

In the popular mediaeval tradition, as contrasted with official theology, there are many legends which associate saintliness and martyrdom with kindness to animals: even Jerome has his lion, to say nothing of Androcles. Vicious animals in that tradition were like the Gadarene swine, inhabited by demons. They might be brought to trial for their misdeeds and punished by the extremest of penalties—a form of distinction which, no doubt, they would willingly have foregone. Domesticated animals, in contrast, were the dwelling places of angels. The merely wild, but not the vicious, were spiritually uninhabited. Saintliness was demonstrated by a capacity to drive the demons out of the vicious—as some of the biographers of Francis of Assissi report that he tamed the wolf of Gobbio—and ordinary human virtue in domesticating wild animals, thus making of them a fit residence for angels.

(John Passmore, "The Treatment of Animals," Journal of the History of Ideas 36 [April-June 1975]: 195-218, at 199)

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Dog Eat Your Taxes?” (Op-Ed, July 9):

It may be amusing for Ray D. Madoff to criticize Leona Helmsley’s charitable giving by saying her fortune “is going to the dogs,” but those of us who give to the Humane Society of the United States and other animal-rescue organizations feel otherwise.

After Hurricane Katrina, after the floods in the Midwest, after the fires in the West, the humane societies across the country rescued and cared for lost animals and then sought to reunite them with their owners.

This may seem one of the “whims of the wealthy” to Mr. Madoff, but it’s not to pet owners.

Maybe the work of the humane societies doesn’t equate to the Rockefeller Foundation’s Green Revolution, but it certainly doesn’t deserve mockery.

Joel R. Gardner
Cherry Hill, N.J., July 9, 2008

Note from KBJ: All of my donations go to animal-welfare organizations. Humans can take care of themselves; domesticated animals cannot.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Of Whales and National Security” (editorial, July 2):

Today’s threats to national security are not “exaggerated”; they are increasing. With the price of gasoline topping $4 a gallon, consider what could happen if a rogue state with quiet diesel-electric submarines were to threaten tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

The United States Fifth Fleet will prevent that from happening. Those sailors and marines will succeed because of the intense training they have undergone—training that included use of active sonar to find enemy submarines.

During training with active sonar, we protect marine mammals by employing rigorous protective measures. Such protective measures were developed in concert with, and were approved by, federal environmental regulators.

I am pleased that the Supreme Court has agreed to review the lower courts’ decisions on the Navy’s use of active sonar in waters off the coast of California. The lives of our sailors and marines, and our national security, depend on it.

(Rear Adm.) Larry Rice
Director, Chief of Naval Operations
Environmental Readiness Division
Washington, July 3, 2008

Henry S. Salt (1851-1939) on the Veil of Ignorance

What have humane people to say to the tremendous mass of animal suffering inflicted in the interests of the Table? By the unthinking, of course, these sufferings, being invisible, are almost wholly overlooked, while the deadening power of habit prevents many kindly persons from exercising, where their daily "beef" and "mutton" are concerned, the very sympathies which they so keenly manifest elsewhere; yet it can hardly be doubted that if the veil of custom could be lifted, and if a clear knowledge of what is involved in "Butchery" could be brought home, with a sense of personal responsibility, to everyone who eats flesh, the attitude of society towards the vegetarian movement would be very different from what it is now. If it be true that "hunger is the best sauce," it may also be said that the bon vivant's most indispensable sauce is ignorance—ignorance of the horrible and revolting circumstances under which his juicy steak or dainty cutlet has been prepared.

(Henry S. Salt, The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 42 [italics in original])

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

“Getting Bacon the Hard Way: Hog-Tying 400 Pounds of Fury” (front page, June 21), about Texas hog hunters, illustrated the barbarity of hunting with dogs.

To compensate for their lack of skill, hunters set their dogs upon a wild pig—a descendant of boars brought to America solely to give hunters the pleasure of killing a helpless animal.

As the dogs tear chunks of flesh from the terrified pig, the hunters undoubtedly feel proud of their accomplishment.

Many hunters compound their cruelty by abandoning their dogs when they are no longer of use. Following hunting season, animal shelters across America see an influx of ex-hunting dogs who were cruelly left to fend for themselves.

Hunting with hounds is neither sport nor conservation. It is an exhibition of human nature at its worst.

Joe Miele
President
Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting
Maywood, N.J., June 23, 2008

"A Harder Approach"

You are now free to boycott Wimbledon.

Health

Here is a story about heart disease. Key paragraph:

"It’s important that each person take responsibility for taking care of themselves," says Edmund Herrold, a clinical cardiologist in New York City and professor at Weill Cornell Medical College. "Get a regular checkup. Watch your weight and your blood pressure and your cholesterol, and if you have diabetes, keep that under control. Exercise. Take an aspirin every day. Eliminate meat. There’s no guarantee, but you can dramatically lower the risk of a cardiac event if you pay attention to these issues."

Emphasis added.

J. Baird Callicott on Value

Some suspicion may arise at this point that the land ethic is ultimately grounded in human interests, not in those of nonhuman natural entities. Just as we might prefer a sound and attractive house to one in the opposite condition so the "goodness" of a whole, stable, and beautiful environment seems rather to be of the instrumental, not the autochthonous, variety. The question of ultimate value is a very sticky one for environmental as well as for all ethics and cannot be fully addressed here. It is my view that there can be no value apart from an evaluator, that all value is as it were in the eye of the beholder. The value that is attributed to the ecosystem, therefore, is humanly dependent or (allowing that other living things may take a certain delight in the well-being of the whole of things, or that the gods may) at least dependent upon some variety of morally and aesthetically sensitive consciousness. Granting this, however, there is a further, very crucial distinction to be drawn. It is possible that while things may only have value because we (or someone) values them, they may nonetheless be valued for themselves as well as for the contribution they might make to the realization of our (or someone's) interests. Children are valued for themselves by most parents. Money, on the other hand, has only an instrumental or indirect value. Which sort of value has the health of the biotic community and its members severally for Leopold and the land ethic? It is especially difficult to separate these two general sorts of value, the one of moral significance, the other merely selfish, when something that may be valued in both ways at once is the subject of consideration. Are pets, for example, well-treated, like children, for the sake of themselves, or, like mechanical appliances, because of the sort of services they provide their owners? Is a healthy biotic community something we value because we are so utterly and (to the biologically well-informed) so obviously dependent upon it not only for our happiness but for our very survival, or may we also perceive it disinterestedly as having an independent worth? Leopold insists upon a noninstrumental value for the biotic community and mutatis mutandis for its constituents. According to Leopold, collective enlightened self-interest on the part of human beings does not go far enough; the land ethic in his opinion (and no doubt this reflects his own moral intuitions) requires "love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for its value." The land ethic, in Leopold's view, creates "obligations over and above self-interest." And, "obligations have no meaning without conscience, and the problem we face is the extension of the social conscience from people to land." If, in other words, any genuine ethic is possible, if it is possible to value people for the sake of themselves, then it is equally possible to value land in the same way.

(J. Baird Callicott, "Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair," Environmental Ethics 2 [winter 1980]: 311-38, at 325-6 [italics in original; footnote omitted])

Note from KBJ: I quote this long passage because it shows, in the context of environmental ethics, how one can distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic value while being a value subjectivist. There are two distinctions that should not be conflated (but that often are). The first is between two types of value: objective and subjective. Objective value inheres in the world outside of subjects and would exist without them; subjective value is conferred by subjects (such as human beings) and would not exist without them. The second distinction is between two ways of valuing: intrinsically and extrinsically. To value a thing intrinsically is to value it for its own sake, as an end in itself, because of the kind of thing it is (i.e., because of its properties). To value a thing extrinsically is to value it for the sake of something else one values, as either a part of or a means to that other thing (i.e., because of its relations). Callicott is a value subjectivist, but he values land ("the biotic community") intrinsically as well as extrinsically. I'm a value subjectivist, but I value land only extrinsically.

Jan Narveson on Moral Vegetarianism

What the utilitarian who defends human carnivorousness must say, then, is something like this: that the amount of pleasure which humans derive per pound of animal flesh exceeds the amount of discomfort and pain per pound which are inflicted on the animals in the process, all things taken into account. Is this plausible? I am not persuaded that it isn't, as far as it goes. But it should be noted that this is only a leading premise, as it were, of a complete argument on the issue. For we must realize that the question is whether this justifies the eating of animals in comparison with alternatives. And there are two relevant kinds of alternatives here: one is treating the animals better before we eat them, the only disadvantage of which is that it would make meat considerably more expensive. And the other is taking up vegetarianism. Utilitarians persuaded of the leading premise here should, I think, be willing to pay the higher prices, and to plump for protections of animals of the kind in question. But what about the vegetarian alternative? Here what one needs to do is calculate the pleasure, interest, satisfaction, etc., by which animal diets exceed vegetable diets for us. And most of us, of course, just don't know about this. How do we know but what, once we got used to a vegetarian diet, we would find that our pleasure is scarcely diminished at all? Human ingenuity is great, and undoubtedly a skilful vegetarian cook can come up with quite a panoply of delicious dishes. It would remain true, of course, that the vegetarian diet is more limited, since every pleasure available to the vegetarian is also available to the carnivore (not counting the moral satisfactions involved, of course—which would be question-begging), plus more which are not available to the vegetarian so long as he remains one. But unless we attach a high intrinsic value to greater aesthetic variety in our diet (and some of us do; but most of us, perhaps, do not), this won't be a decisive consideration.

Once one bears in mind that it is this comparative assessment that is required, then it seems to me there will be a strong case (1) for Humane Slaughter, and humane treatment prior to slaughter, and (2) insofar as really painless and comfortable animal-raising is not attained or attainable, giving vegetarianism a try, at least. In present circumstances, the following would seem to be indicated. Depending on the time and energy available, utilitarians persuaded of the foregoing should try a period of vegetarianism, at least, in order to see how they get on, and perhaps as a weapon in the form of boycotting such meat and dairy products as are produced in excessive disregard for the comfort of the animals in question: a much milder program than the one Singer and Regan call for, but one giving more to the animals than we usually do, and leaving our consciences rather less comfortable than they perhaps typically are.

(Jan Narveson, "Animal Rights," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7 [March 1977]: 161-78, at 173-4 [italics in original])

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “South Koreans Assail U.S. Pact, Shaking Leader” (front page, June 11), about the large demonstrations in Seoul:

In October 1989, six Korean college students broke into the American ambassador’s residence in Seoul and did $35,000 worth of damage before being arrested by the Korean police. I was the ambassador, and the issue was beef.

Modern Korean society still has deep roots in its agricultural traditions, and Koreans can get very defensive about any issue that seems to threaten the livelihood of “grandpa and grandma” back on the farm, even if this causes them to pay twice as much for inefficiently produced Korean beef as they would for foreign imports.

This is a delicate issue that needs to be handled with sensitivity by leaders in Seoul and Washington, so that the question of beef does not derail the important free-trade agreement with South Korea being considered by Congress.

This issue also needs to be placed in a broader context. South Korea is a tremendous ally of the United States. It sent more than 300,000 troops to help us in Vietnam, was a quick and generous supporter of Desert Storm in 1991, and for several years had the third-largest deployment of troops in Iraq, following our invasion of that country five years ago.

Without our strong alliance with South Korea, our influence in Asia would be vastly diminished. Let us keep that fact clearly in mind, as we deal with the fractious beef issue.

Donald Gregg
Chairman, Korea Society
Armonk, N.Y., June 12, 2008

Note from KBJ: If South Koreans were truly concerned with their health, they wouldn't be eating beef in the first place.

Meat-Eating and the Environment

Vegetarianism is overdetermined, in the sense that there is more than one sufficient reason for being a vegetarian. Here is one determination of it.

Mexican Rodeos

Here is a New York Times story about Mexican rodeos.

Ethological Ethics

I found this website the other day and thought I'd bring it to your attention.