Foundations of Animal Consciousness

When a banana harvesting machine detects and grabs a banana, there is nothing it’s like to be that machine. The machine does not have a point of view or a stream of consciousness. But when a human or monkey looks a banana, there is something it’s like for us to see it. Qualities of the fruit’s shape, size, and color manifest in our stream of consciousness. If we grasp the object, we can feel its texture and firmness. And if we bite into the banana, we can taste its sweetness. Most agree that primates are not the only kinds of creatures that have experiences like taste, smell, sight, touch, sounds, pleasure and pain. But it can be difficult to sort out which other creatures do, as well as the qualities that decorate their inner worlds. Do worms have any experiences or are they like the banana harvesting machine? Do wasps experience pain when sprayed with Raid? Do fish experience fear or sadness? And what should we say about octopuses?  

You might ask, “how we could possibly know what’s going on inside another creature’s head?!” There’s no way to peek inside to see their thoughts or emotions. What if all nonhuman creatures are mindless machines? The 17^th century philosopher Rene Descartes thought that animals were complex automata that God designed for us to use, programmed to react to stimuli without ever feeling or thinking anything. Humans are special, says Descartes, because we are immaterial souls created by God to exercise free control over our bodies. While we can’t definitively say he is wrong, Descartes’s views about animal minds are now extremely controversial, even among theists. But why exactly do most philosophers today reject Descartes’s views about animals? Part of the story is that we’ve learned a lot more about animal behavior, the brain, and the evolution of life on Earth. The other part of the story involves reasoning from this newly acquired knowledge to the existence of animal minds. Conceptual tools like analogical inferences and inferences to the best explanation can be used to build bridges between our observations of the world and our theories. Before judging the reasons philosophers have for thinking some animals have minds, it’s useful to first review the reasons for thinking that other people have minds.

How do you know that you aren’t alone in this world? It’s possible that all other humans that you interact with are like the banana harvesting machine but behave like they have minds. How could that be? Perhaps you are in a perfect computer simulation and those around you are all mindless NPCs. Or maybe your mind has just been spontaneously created by a freak natural accident with false memories of a past and you’re currently dreaming all of this up. It’s impossible to conclusively disprove either of these scenarios using observations, however unlikely we take them to be. Any form of evidence against either hypothesis could be understood as part of a well-designed simulation or a vivid dream. So, if we’re going to discount the possibility of knowing about other nonhuman minds, on the grounds that it’s possible Descartes is right, we must also say the same about the minds of our family and friends. I don’t think we need to conclusively rule out these radical skeptical scenarios to justifiably believe there are other minds. But what then justifies our beliefs about other minds?

There are many similarities that I can observe between me and other humans. Typically, other humans make eye contact during conversation and can infer the kind of mood I’m in. They can answer questions about what’s on their mind, they scream when they stub their toes and sometimes will laugh at my jokes. They also have similar brains and perceptual organs to my own, not created by a mad scientist, but are products of evolution by natural selection. If other humans behave in consistently similar ways to me across a wide range of contexts, are neurobiologically very similar, and have an evolutionary history, then they (probably) have a mind like I do. The inference from my own mind to other humans is not airtight, but it’s the nearly as strong as can be. The only stronger inference to other minds would involve my perfect clone.  

Applying this inference to creatures outside our species gets trickier. Nonhumans often exhibit different behaviors, vary in their neuroanatomy, and have different evolutionary histories. But still, the inference remains very strong for at least some groupings of creatures. Nonhuman apes like chimpanzees exhibit many of the same behaviors as us, have a complex brain with a neocortex, and they are evolutionarily closely related to us. The common ancestor between chimpanzees and humans can be traced back to around six million years ago, which in evolutionary time is not very long ago. Chimpanzees exhibit complex and flexible behaviors that are best explained by the presence of psychological capacities such as self-awareness, episodic memory and foresight, as well as logical and mathematical reasoning. If we can be at least 99% sure other humans have minds, we can be at least 98% sure chimpanzees do too.

The common ancestor of all mammals lived around 180 million years ago. The timescale is grand enough for some mammals to have evolved significantly different behavioral and neuroanatomical traits, but no such examples have (yet) been discovered. All mammals have the same basic structure including the possession of a neocortex found in us and chimpanzees. So, generalizing this analogical inference to all mammals is also well justified.

When around other mammals, many just find it obvious that they have minds like we do. It’s especially true when considering cats and dogs. We often attribute a wide range of mental states to them without much deliberation. Most people who attribute mental states to their pets don’t know much about the brain or evolutionary theory but clearly recognize the many behavioral similarities between us and them. Certain observed behaviors cry out for an explanation and the possession of a mind seems like the best one. When a cat screams after its owner steps on its tail, we infer that the cat is in pain. When a cat meows after long periods without food, we infer that they are hungry. And when a cat runs away from helium balloons or cucumbers, we infer that they saw the object and are afraid of it. As a cat owner, I could spend all day listing examples.

We, in principle, could learn something about cats, chimpanzees, or other humans that casts serious doubt upon the existence of their minds. We could in the process of doing brain surgery, we discover that other humans have hard drives in their skulls. Or maybe we are approached by men in black suits who provide ample evidence that this world is a computer simulation. Perhaps Descartes is right about animals and God informs us through an act of revelation. But merely imagining ways that others may not have minds, given all the evidence to the contrary, does not create a reasonable doubt.

In surveying other groupings of animals, we’ll encounter some potentially relevant differences. As we will see, it is more difficult to justifiably infer the existence of animal consciousness outside of our mammalian class, and in some cases, it will make sense to deny mentality to some of these other groupings. In the next post of this series, I will evaluate the prospects for four non-mammalian animal groupings: annelids, bivalves, cnidarians, and gastropods. Do earthworms feel pain when hooked? Can clams feel the steam rising from a cooking pan? Is there something it’s like for jellyfish see or smell bioluminescence? Do sea slugs fear their predators?

  

The Chicken and the Egg: The Final Chapter*

 

Contrary to Aristotle, chickens haven’t always existed. And contrary to Genesis, chickens were not created instantaneously in either adult or egg form. Modern evolutionary biology tells us that modern chickens evolved from red jungle fowls in southeast Asia around 8000 years ago. But which came first? The chicken or the chicken egg?

Chic is the name I’ll assign to the first chicken. Around 8000 years ago, Chic hatched from an egg laid by her (non-chicken) red jungle fowl mother. Since the egg that Chic hatched from existed before Chic did, it seems like we can quickly settle the age-old question. The chicken egg came first! Many philosophers and scientists have concluded that the egg-first view is correct for empirical and conceptual reasons (Sorensen, 1992; Papineau, 2006). However, to arrive at the egg-first view, one must establish that the egg that Chic hatched from was a chicken egg and not a red jungle fowl egg. For if Chic hatched from a red jungle fowl egg, the chicken-first view would prevail.

After being contacted by a Disney representative working on the film Chicken Little, the philosopher of science David Papineau offered the following as support for the egg-first view:

"I would argue it's a chicken egg if it has a chicken in it. If a kangaroo laid an egg from which an ostrich hatched, that would surely be an ostrich egg, not a kangaroo egg. By this reasoning, the first chicken did indeed come from a chicken egg, even though that egg didn't come from chickens."

Many might share Papineau’s intuition. But his argument relies upon a principle that can be called into question. In its general form, the principle could be formulated as follows: if an embryo of species X hatches from an egg, then it’s an X egg. I’ll call this the carrier principle.

Upon first glance, one might find Papineau’s example to be intuitive and strong support for the carrier principle. But our intuitions about what type of egg something is seems to shift depending on the details. If I imagine a scenario where a kangaroo lays an egg that looks like just an ostrich egg and an ostrich hatches from it, I suspect most would quickly declare it to be an ostrich egg. But this intuition could be generated merely by the association of ostriches with ostrich-like eggs. Our familiarity with what ostrich eggs look like might make it hard for us to view it as something else. Here are three unfamiliar scenarios that both test and raise doubts about Papineau’s carrier principle.

Genetic Engineering: Suppose in the future, a kangaroo is genetically modified so that it lays hard shelled eggs like birds do, but with a highly unique shape and color. Its eggs are lime green with hexagonal plates. Suppose that at an early stage of development, scientists were to create a small hole in one of the kangaroo’s eggs and exchange the kangaroo embryo with an ostrich embryo. Eventually a healthy ostrich hatches from the egg. According to the carrier principle, the egg was an ostrich egg since an ostrich hatched from it. Additionally, the carrier principle implies that the egg changed its type (from kangaroo egg to ostrich egg) once the embryo exchange took place.

Divine Intervention: Suppose that God decided to use his supernatural powers to spontaneously generate a human embryo inside of a large egg laid by an ostrich. Months go by and a human baby hatches from the egg. The carrier principle implies that this baby did not hatch from an ostrich egg. It hatched from a human egg.

Saltation: Suppose that a red jungle fowl were to lay two eggs identical in size, shape, genetic profile, and except for the embryo, the interior contents are also the same. The first egg contains a normal ostrich embryo, but the second egg contained an embryo with several rare mutations. The mutations significantly change the genome of the embryo to the point that it constitutes a speciation event. So, the second egg contains the embryo of a new species, the chicken. According the carrier principle, the eggs are of different types even though the eggs themselves are identical.

There is an alternative principle informed by embryology and the scientific study of eggs (i.e. oogenesis) that supports the chicken-first view. Following Waller (1998), I’d like to first distinguish between (chicken) eggs and (chicken) embryos. By egg, I mean the white oval-shaped object produced by chickens that found in many American refrigerators and by embryo, I mean the organism that typically develops within the egg. This distinction is important because although chicken embryos are typically carried within chicken eggs, they need not be. When it comes to the first member of a new species, the egg is always a different species than the embryo.  

In this case, the egg that Chic hatched from would have had the genetics of her mother, a red jungle fowl. This is because, as Waller (1998) helpfully points out, the eggs are created prior to the embryo and always have the same genetics as the mother. So, there is a scientific reason for thinking that Chic hatched from a red jungle fowl egg. The alternative to carrier principle, which I’ll dub the oogenetic principle states that if egg x has the DNA of species y, then x is a y egg.

Why should we prefer the oogenetic principle over the carrier principle? One reason is that the oogenetic principle is informed by the of science of genetics and egg development. A second reason is that it fares much better against hypothetical counterexamples. The oogenetic principle tells us that most animals in the real world hatched from eggs of the same species but it also has the virtue of being consistent with the view that animals can hatch from eggs of different species in cases of natural speciation, as well as divine intervention, and artificial genetic engineering scenarios. The carrier principle should be resisted for it entails that it’s (logically) impossible for a creature to hatch out of the egg of another species.

In closing, I’ve argued that the despite the initial intuitiveness and popularity of the egg-first view, the chicken-first view has several advantages. For those who view this as a purely semantic debate, you could eliminate the verbal dispute by following Aristotle and making a distinction between two different kinds of eggs: chicken-produced eggs and chicken-producing eggs (Jansen, 2006). If one specifies the former, then the chicken came first. If one specifies the latter, then the egg came first. The End.

 

Works cited

What came first, the chicken or the egg? the definitive answer. (2006). Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/may/26/uknews

Jansen, Ludger (2006). It’s Chicken and Eggs again: Vagueness, Quasi-Species, and Evolution. Conceptus: Zeitschrift Fur Philosophie 36 (89):71-77.

Sorensen, R. (2003). A Brief History of the Paradox: Philosophy and the Labyrinths of the Mind. Oxford University Press.

Sorensen, R. A. (1992). The egg came before the chicken. Mind, 101(403).

Waller, D. (1998). The chicken and her egg. Mind, 107(428), 851-853.

 *"The Final Chapter" is an allusion to the subtitle of Friday the 13th Part 4. The series continued well after the "final chapter" (seven additional sequels and a remake), and I expect debates on this issue will not end any time soon. 

 

 

 

 

 

The case against pro-choice vegans

Stating that there are “ethical reasons” against eating meat strongly implies that eating meat is immoral. Furthermore, it implies that those who do eat meat should be judged as immoral for doing so. Some vegetarians and vegans might resist these implications. One might claim that giving up meat is just a “personal choice” and others are free to eat what they want. To quote New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (who is a vegan), “This is the United States of America, and I, for one, believe in our freedom to choose. So, I don’t want to preach to anybody about their diets; that’s just not how I live” (1). While there may be many vegans and vegetarians that hold this this position, is it defensible?

First, it is important to define two important terms. Ethical veganism is the view which states one ought to avoid purchasing and consuming animal products in order to reduce unnecessary animal cruelty and suffering.* Ethical vegans reject the idea that animals are mere things for humans to use and abuse for entertainment or to maximize human taste pleasure. Animals should be treated as subjects not objects. We can contrast ethical veganism with carnism. Carnism is the view which states that eating meat and using animals is morally permissible. Carnism is usually defended by appealing to the intellectual superiority of humans over other animals or skepticism about animal minds (e.g. animals don’t feel pain).

The pro-choice position

Pro-choice vegan advocates maintain that ethical veganism is true, but that one should be tolerant of carnists. On a common conception, tolerance requires treating others with respect, even if they have opposing values and beliefs that you find indefensible. If this is what vegans and vegetarians mean by tolerance, then there is no issue. But the pro-choice vegan advocates seem to accept a much broader conception of tolerance. Not only should we show respect to those who we disagree with, we should not even try to persuade them that carnism is indefensible or tell them that their eating habits are immoral. Instead, some ethical vegans endorse “freedom of choice” when it comes to eating habits. They believe that it is wrong to consume animal products because it normalizes and perpetuates animal cruelty on a massive scale, but act as if it is fine when other people do it. For example, ethical vegans who passively eat dinner with people who are eating meat. To see why this is a peculiar position (if it’s not already obvious), consider a parallel case.

Imagine that a woman (A) who recently had an abortion enters a discussion with another woman (B) who is pro-life advocate. First, B argues that fetuses have a right-to-life and that abortion is seriously immoral, equivalent to murdering an innocent adult. B also maintains that there are no special circumstances (e.g. rape or incest) that would provide moral justification for having an abortion. Then, A informs B that she just recently had an abortion because she had changed her mind about wanting to have children. 

What should B think about A’s decision, given her moral beliefs? Here are two possible responses:

R1: While I strongly believe what A did was seriously immoral, I am pro-choice when it comes to ethical decision making. I think you should be free to engage in immoral behavior if you want to, even if it does harm or violate the rights of others.  

R2: What A did was seriously wrong! A’s decision was morally indefensible as it violated the rights of an innocent human. You can’t just murder someone because it’s convenient for you!

While you should consult your own intuitions, I think it’s clear that R2 is the rational response to the situation. You might think that it would be socially inappropriate or rude to morally condemn A, but have such thoughts are perfectly reasonable given the moral beliefs of B and the actions of A. Other parallel cases could be developed by substituting the content of the dialogue with other moral issues. Would it make sense for an 18^th century abolitionist to have been “pro-choice” about slaveholding? Or a women’s rights activist to be “pro-choice” about human rights? If not, then why would it make sense for ethical veganism to be consistent with being pro-choice?

Possible disanalogies

1)     Moral uncertainty: Ethical vegans are tolerant of others’ behavior because they’re not sure their position is correct. There are some doubts whether it’s wrong to kill or harm animals, and having these doubts warrants the “pro-choice” outlook. After all, ethical vegans might hold false beliefs (e.g. beliefs about nutrition or animal minds).  

Response: One could raise possible doubts about any position. That does not mean we aren’t justified in having beliefs. In cases where there are lots of unknowns, adopting an agnostic stance makes sense. But those who accept ethical veganism aren’t typically agnostics. If they accept ethical veganism, they should believe that there are strong reasons for accepting it.

2)    Differing degrees of wrongness: One might think that carnism is morally indefensible but hold that it isn’t seriously wrong.

Response: Perhaps ethical vegans believe that abstaining from eating meat is morally praiseworthy rather than obligatory. Maybe meat eating is perceived to be morally equivalent to stealing pirated music or adultery, rather than acts of murder or violence against humans. It’s immoral, but not so immoral that it should cause us to criticize those who engage in such behavior. It would be interesting to try and empirically gauge how wrong vegans and vegetarians consider meat eating to be. If ethical vegans don’t believe that eating meat is seriously wrong, it could potentially reconcile the conflict between being “pro-choice” and an ethical vegan.

3)    Moral ignorance: One might think that carnism is morally indefensible but acknowledge that most people haven’t come to that realization, either because they haven’t had the time to really think about it or haven’t been exposed to enough information.

Response: Ignorance of the wrongness of an action or practice can excuse one’s behavior. But if ethical vegans believe most people are ignorant about the meat industry, shouldn’t they try to inform them? It may well be true that most people aren’t informed, but how would that justify a “pro-choice” position?

Conclusion

I have argued that those who are serious about ethical veganism, but adopt a pro-choice stance, are being inconsistent. If someone believes an action is morally wrong, and then they see someone engaging in that action, they should judge that person’s action to be wrong and if possible, try to influence their behavior. Ethical vegans could avoid the inconsistency by appealing to moral uncertainty or by adopting a position which holds that veganism is praiseworthy rather than morally obligatory. 

There's still a lot to be said about what consistent ethical vegans should do to influence others' behavior. Should all ethical vegans become activists? Should they refuse to eat dinner with meat eaters? Should they offer their family and friends pamplets to inform them about factory farms? I won't take a stance on these issues here, as I am still not sure what the most effective means of moral persuasion are. What I do know is that being a passive bystander around meat eaters will likely prolong the social acceptance of eating meat. As philosopher Michael Huemer observes, "for most of the wrongs of the past--slavery, colonialism, the oppression of women--the victims could and did speak up. In the present case, the victims will never be able to act or speak for themselves. There is no one to speak against what we humans are doing, except us. So we have to do it. If we don't it will never stop" (Huemer 2019).  

I suspect that many of the tactics used by modern animal rights activists (e.g. protesting inside restaurants, jumping on stage at political rallies) are counterproductive and often result in a backfire effect. To reach conclusions about these more practical issues, we should shift our attention towards the psychological sciences. Research on moral persuasion, self-control, peer pressure, and belief formation, will likely be useful when deciding upon the right strategies. Moral philosophy can only take us so far. 

Sources

Huemer, M. (2019). Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism. Routledge.

Reasonable doubts and the OJ verdict

In the United States, criminal convictions require that the jurors have no reasonable doubts about the suspect’s guilt. If there are any, the jurors must vote not guilty. In the eyes of the law, guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is the highest standard of justification, used primarily to ensure that innocent people are not wrongly convicted. But jurors (and even legal experts) often have different conceptions of reasonable doubt. Can a reasonable doubt be quantified in probabilistic terms (e.g. 5% chance suspect is innocent)? Can a reasonable doubt be determined by self-reports of confidence? How do you determine whether a judgment is reasonable? Reasonable given the jurors’ background knowledge and cognitive abilities? Or is there some way of determining whether a judgment is reasonable without taking into account of knowledge and intelligence?

To further analyze this concept of reasonable doubt, it helps to apply it to a real-world case: The OJ Simpson trial (see Toobin 2015 for a detailed account of the events).

There are at least three distinct questions that are often conflated about the OJ verdict:

1)     Did OJ commit the murders?

2)    Is it reasonable to doubt that OJ committed the murders?

3)    Did the prosecution’s evidence prove beyond a reasonable doubt that OJ committed the murders?

While there may be a consensus among legal experts regarding the first two questions, some prominent legal experts disagree about the third. Did the jury reach the proper verdict?*

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who was part of Simpson’s defense team, argues that given the evidence presented, the jury was reasonable to believe that the LAPD lied and fabricated some of the evidence (Dershowitz, 1996). These beliefs were reasonable because the defense team presented the jury with information about a chemical compound EDTA that was found in the blood sample taken from OJ’s sock. The defense team argued that the presence of EDTA indicated that the blood did not come directly from Simpson, but came from a preserved sample of his blood taken by the LAPD detectives. One of the theories presented to the jury was that one of the officers spilled the blood obtained from Simpson on the sock so that they would have conclusive evidence of his guilt. Dershowitz then argues that if the LAPD fabricated some evidence, it is reasonable to conclude that the prosecution did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that OJ was guilty. To support this conclusion, Dershowtiz cites a closing argument by one of his expert witnesses, Dr. Henry Lee: "If you find a cockroach in a bowl of spaghetti, you don't look for another cockroach before you throw out the whole bowl of spaghetti." 

Former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi disagrees with Dershowitz’s analysis of the verdict. Bugliosi argues that, even if it was reasonable to believe that some of the evidence was fabricated, it was still unreasonable to doubt Simpson committed the murders, given that there was still ample evidence of his guilt. These opposing viewpoints held by two prominent legal experts raises an interesting question about the reasonable doubt standard: how much evidence is needed to undermine the belief that a suspect is guilty? Who is right on this point? Dershowtiz or Bugliosi?

Casting aside any doubts about the conspiracy claims of Simpson’s defense team, assume for the sake of argument that the LAPD did plant the bloody sock. Would it be reasonable to conclude that OJ might be innocent? Bugliosi firmly argues, “No” (Bugliosi, 1996). He points out that there was still enough evidence (both physical and circumstantial) to convict Simpson that couldn’t have been fake or tampered with. Bugliosi cites the conclusive evidence of Simpson’s blood at the murder scene, the bloody size-12 bootprints discovered with a trail of OJ’s blood to the left (bandaged left hand the morning after), no alibi for OJ during the 45 minute window when the murders took place, the brutal nature of the killings (unlikely that drug dealers or strangers would do this), ample evidence that OJ owned and wore the murder gloves, and his prior history of spousal abuse. Furthermore, Bugliosi points out that not a shred of evidence points in the direction of another suspect.**

Dershowitz, of course, is aware of the evidence that Bugliosi cites. Despite the fact that they are both extremely knowledgeable and skilled lawyers, they still disagree about whether the verdict was reasonable. If the experts disagree, how can we establish whether a given verdict is proper or not? One way to settle the dispute is to carefully examine an epistemic principle that is at the heart of their disagreement. Here is what I take the underlying principle to be:

The No Defeater (ND) principle: In order to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt, there may be no defeaters to the evidence that establishes guilt.

I think it’s fair to say that Dershowitz endorses this principle, whereas Bugliosi clearly rejects it. How plausible is it as a general principle for establishing reasonable doubt? To test its plausibility, let’s rewind the tape and suppose that the prosecution came across some additional evidence. A video is presented to the jury that features OJ walking up North Rockingham Avenue, entering his Bronco with a visibly bloody left hand. Would it be possible to reasonably doubt Simpson’s guilt at this point? According to the ND principle, it would be, provided that the jury were aware of some defeaters (e.g. a planted bloody sock). But I don’t buy this for a second. For defeaters to undermine OJ’s guilt, in this hypothetical case, they would need to undermine or cast doubt upon the preponderance of evidence, not just some of the evidence. One piece of damning evidence is enough to discount any of the defeaters presented by the defense team. Of course, we could run the tape back and imagine a scenario where the video evidence, as well as the rest of the evidence, would have been defeated. Suppose that the defense team uncovered that the LAPD hired an OJ look-alike to appear on camera that night to frame OJ. That would clearly undermine the prosecution’s evidence. But absent such evidence, the video evidence alone would be enough to establish guilt, even if there were some credible evidence that the LAPD planted a sock or a glove.

The ND principle makes it much too easy to reach a reasonable doubt. A more plausible principle would be that in order for there to be a reasonable doubt about a murder suspect, the defeaters in question must undermine or establish serious doubts upon most of the evidence that incriminates the suspect. Why? Because we still need to explain why the rest of the incriminating evidence exists. If there are no reasonable alternative explanations for the majority of the evidence, the best explanation (i.e. the murder suspect did it) prevails. One can have reasonable doubts regarding some of evidence presented in a trial. And I'm sure the jurors did in the case of the Simpson case. But one cannot forget about the rest of the evidence and prefer far less likely explanations just because some of the evidence for a theory is suspicious. 

In closing, I think Buglosi was right about the verdict, even if we were to limit ourselves to  the evidence presented. There was no reasonable doubt that OJ did it, even if there were reasonable doubts about some of the evidence. 

*The question is a normative rather than a descriptive one. Whether or not OJ did it is a factual question. I take it that whether the verdict was proper depends on the justification of the jurors’ beliefs (not the facts).  

**In Bugliosi’s book “Outrage”, he documents additional evidence of guilt that was not discussed or presented to the jury. In brief: OJ’s behavior after the murder (suicide note, fled from cops with disguise and 9k of cash), circumstantial evidence of premeditation (purchase of disguise 2 weeks before the murder), incriminating testimony from OJ that he had cut his hand that night and the he left blood in several locations (but no explanation for how this happened).

Works cited: 

Bugliosi, V. (1996). Outrage: The five reasons why OJ Simpson got away with murder. WW Norton & Company.

Dershowitz, A. M. (1996). Reasonable doubts: The OJ Simpson case and the criminal justice system (p. 55). New York: Simon & Schuster.

Toobin, J. (2015). The Run of His Life: The People VOJ Simpson. Random House Trade Paperbacks.

Naming the trait: Part 1

I take it as a given that it is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering to sentient beings, regardless of species. It is wrong to stab puppies in the eyes, wrong to yank off a cat’s tail, and wrong to slice off a chicken’s beak. And it’s wrong to do these things all for the same reason: it causes animals to undergo immense suffering. I don’t think it takes an argument to understand why this is true, but rather, I believe the wrongness of harming sentient beings for trivial reasons is self-evident. A non-obvious ethical question is whether it is morally permissible to end a sentient creature’s life for human consumption, provided the creature did not suffer or feel pain in the process of dying.  

There are some philosophers that take issue with factory farms but not with the act of humanely killing animals. Philosopher Peter Singer has stated that if an animal has lived a good natural life and does not undergo any substantial suffering, it is morally permissible to kill the animal for food. One could imagine a farm where the animals live good lives. Suppose that the animals get to engage in natural behaviors, keep their offspring, are not systematically mutilated, and are slaughtered on site through a process that results in instantaneous destruction of their brain. Let’s also stipulate that the animals wouldn’t know that their death was near and that they would miss or worry about their slaughtered relatives. Given that there is no substantial suffering for the animals, Singer would say that we have an instance of ethical animal farming.

  

While the hypothetical case for ethical animal farming may sound very plausible, there is a powerful objection that may cause you to reconsider your views. Put simply, what if we changed the species of the animal being farmed from, say, cows to humans? If the humans get to live good lives, get to engage in natural behaviors, and are painlessly killed without any foreknowledge, would it be okay to kill humans for food? And if not, what is the morally relevant difference between humans and cows that renders the action wrong in one case and permissible in the other? 

Vegan youtuber Ask Yourself (Isaac) poses the question as a challenge to “name the trait”. If there is a morally relevant difference, then there is some trait (or set of traits) that explains why it’s wrong to kill humans but not cows. While there are many attempts to name the trait (e.g. species, intelligence, rationality, reciprocation) I will focus on the answer that seems most plausible. In short, I don’t think it is a single trait that makes the moral difference, but rather, a set of traits. 

The personhood response

Humans are morally superior to farm animals because they are persons. That is to say, humans are self-aware, have a strong desire to go on living, and have long-term life projects (e.g. raising a family, saving the rainforests). They are also involved in complex social relationships, which mean that their deaths can affect and harm lots of other persons. Cows do not have these psychological traits. They may have short term desires to eat and procreate, but it is unlikely that they have the cognitive capacities to understand their own existence or the nature of death. Therefore, because humans are persons, they have a higher moral status than cows, which in turn makes it wrong to kill humans, but permissible to kill cows.  

The personhood reductio 

While I do think personhood is the strongest response to the name-the-trait challenge, it has some (potentially) disturbing implications. Not all humans possess the psychological traits required for personhood (e.g. infants and humans with severe cognitive disabilities). Thus, the explanation I’m offering would not work in the case of painlessly killing marginal cases for food. So, if it’s morally permissible to kill creatures lacking personhood for food, then it would be morally permissible to kill babies or the cognitively disabled for food.  

Isaac observes that many of the responses to name-the-trait have this implication (e.g. intelligence, rationality), and he believes that this renders all such responses absurd or unacceptable. If we are to deny any human the right the life, we have rejected a widely held moral principle: all humans have an equal right to life. Isaac implies that since the personhood response is inconsistent with widely held moral intuitions, we should reject or dismiss it. Put another way, if one concedes that some humans don’t have a right to life, they have lost the moral debate. I don’t find Isaac’s response compelling for several reasons. Assuming for the sake of argument that Isaac’s empirical claim is true, the popularity of a moral view is not a deciding factor in resolving difficult questions in ethics. If it were, then we would already have strong reasons to reject ethical veganism. 

There seems to be an inconsistency in Isaac’s approach to ethics. To defend ethical veganism, Isaac appeals to rational arguments that explain why eating meat is immoral. But in responding to critics, he appeals to irrelevant considerations, like popularity. It could be that Isaac is just a pragmatist, using reason when it’s useful for moral persuasion. But given his strong emphasis on being logically consistent, I will continue to interpret his objections as substantive philosophical claims. In the next post of this series, I will further analyze the personhood reductio and the implications for ethical veganism. Specifically, I will address the following questions: 

Firstly, if one concedes that it is morally permissible to breed and kill babies for food, does one really lose the debate? Secondly, if one cannot name-the-trait, is veganism the only rationally defensible position? 

Anti-fatalism

In the free will debate, there is a distinction to be made between the metaphysical views of determinism and fatalism. Determinism is a view about the nature of causation, that every event was necessarily caused by some prior events evolving in accord with the laws of nature. This thesis has direct implications for human agency, in that, if we are determined to act based on the past, we could not have done otherwise. Fatalism states that the unfolding of all events happens necessarily, neutral on questions of causation. On fatalism, the world—at any point in time— could not have been otherwise.

Most philosophers probably reject fatalism, but, as far as I know, there isn’t a name for the position. So, from here on out, I will refer to the negation of fatalism as anti-fatalism. To accept anti-fatalism, one would just have to demonstrate a possible difference in the evolution of the universe. I will argue that the only way to refute fatalism would be to demonstrate that the universe had an absolute beginning that was indeterministic. If the eternal universe model, or any alternative model of the universe is correct, then the world is, was, and always will be, necessarily the way that things are.

We can imagine that the past could have been different. Someone other than Benjamin Franklin could have invented the bifocals, Hillary Clinton could have won the 2016 election, and I could have majored in neuroscience rather than philosophy. Nothing (logically) impossible when it comes to the past being different. However, when we ask whether these things are metaphysically possible, it is going to depend upon on whether fatalism is correct. If fatalism is true, then all of these imagined events would be metaphysically impossible (though, still logically possible). Determinists regularly claim that it is possible that the past could have been different, and in those hypothetical alternative worlds, that we could have done otherwise. What sense of possibility does the determinist have in mind: logical or metaphysical? If logical possibility, then the claim is uncontroversial. There are no contradictions involved in supposing Benjamin Franklin’s cousin could have invented the bifocals or that Hillary Clinton could have won the 2016 election. If metaphysical possibility, the truth of the claim is not as obvious.

For the sake of argument, suppose that both 1) determinism is true, and 2) it was metaphysically possible for Hillary Clinton to have won the 2016 election (HC). For HC to be true, there must be a metaphysically possible world where either the past (e.g. No Russians) and/or laws of nature were different. But how could we explain the possibility of a difference if our universe is deterministic? On determinism, the possibility of a different present requires the possibility of a different past. But any change in the past requires either a subsequent change in the past, ad infinitum. Given that changing the past seems hopeless, one might be tempted to go back to the Big Bang to posit a change in the laws of nature. If the initial conditions of the universe were different, then Hillary could have won. But notice that we wind up in the same exact position as before. How could we explain the possibility of a difference in the initial state, if the universe is deterministic?

To make room for alternative possibilities, one has to introduce some randomness or indeterminacy for the laws of nature or initial conditions of the universe.* Assuming that the laws of nature arose at the moment of the Big Bang, and that there was no such thing as a past that preceded the singularity, one could hold that you can have indeterminism at the very beginning but that everything else afterwards was determined. Here, we have a possible world where determinism is true, but fatalism is not. However, one must assume that the universe had an absolute beginning and that it could have been otherwise. In making these assumptions, one must also rule out two other theses. Namely, 1) that the universe is eternal, and 2) That the initial state of the universe was necessary (fatalism). Given that ruling out 2 is the very thesis is question, it would be question-begging for the anti-fatalist to assume it is false (without argument). 

Thus, for both anti-fatalism and determinism to be true, the universe must have had a beginning. On an eternal universe model, there is no beginning or point in which indeterministic elements could enter, for this would falsify determinism.