debitage: part of the core tool and scraper tradition

debitage

10.2.06

Animal Rights And The Ecological Fallacy

Martha Nussbaum has an interesting, but I think ultimately unsuccessful, article arguing for a different approach to establishing moral status for animals. Her view is basically consequentialist, but she rejects the aggregation characteristic of utilitarianism. Where utilitarianism measures all aspects of an individual's life in a single metric of pleasure or satisfaction, and then sums the pleasures or satisfactions of all individuals, Nussbaum wants to consider the separate goods that make up each individual's life, goods which cannot be traded off either within or across individuals. She further rejects the psychological subjectivism of utilitarianism's metrics, preferring to state her list of goods as objective conditions for the dignified flourishing of the being.

There's a lot to take apart in Nussbaum's article, but the thing I want to focus on for now is how Nussbaum falls prey to what I see as one of the key critiques made by utilitarians against Kantian arguments that accord rights to all and only humans: the ecological fallacy. The Kantian argument says, in essence: "since the average human is capable of reason, whereas the average animal is not, then every human has the set of rights that come from the ability to reason, whereas no animal has those rights. Utilitarians rightly point out that it is fallacious to judge an individual by the characteristics of the other members of some arbitrarily-selected group (in this case the species -- but the argument has also powerfully been made by feminists in response to those who would base universal gender roles on differences in the average capabilities of the sexes). Nussbaum seems to recognize the problem when she argues for an individualist, rather than "species rights" perspective. But she falls right into the ecological fallacy in her discussion of how we decide what are the list of goods contributing to a creature's flourishing:

Capacities do crisscross and overlap: A chimpanzee may have more capacity for empathy and perspectival thinking than a very young child, or than an older child with autism. And capacities that humans sometimes arrogantly claim for themselves alone are found very widely in nature. But it seems wrong to conclude from such facts that species membership is morally and politically irrelevant. A child with mental disabilities is actually very different from a chimpanzee, though in certain respects some of her capacities may be comparable. Such a child's life is difficult in a way that the life of a chimpanzee is not difficult: She is cut off from forms of flourishing that, but for the disability, she might have had. There is something blighted and disharmonious in her life, whereas the life of a chimpanzee may be perfectly flourishing. Her social and political functioning, her friendships, her ability to have a family all may be threatened by her disabilities, in a way that the normal functioning of a chimpanzee in the community of chimpanzees is not threatened by its cognitive endowment.

That is relevant when we consider issues of basic justice. For children born with Down syndrome, it is crucial that the political culture in which they live make a big effort to extend to them the fullest benefits of citizenship they can attain, through health benefits, education, and re-education of public culture. That is so because they can flourish only as human beings. They have no option of flourishing as happy chimpanzees. For a chimpanzee, on the other hand, it seems to me that expensive efforts to teach language, while interesting and revealing for human scientists, are not matters of basic justice. A chimpanzee flourishes in its own way, communicating with its own community in a perfectly adequate manner that has gone on for ages.

I see no reason why the species should be taken as the fundamental unit for the allocation of conditions for flourishing. Why not, instead, subdivide the species so that a child with Down's Syndrome has a different list of capabilities than a non-Down's child? Or go the other way, and say that all the primates have a list of capabilities proper to them?

In the end, I think the only way to tell whether a being is flourishing is to ask it (or to observe other behavioral indicators). This brings us back, though, to one of the key points of utilitarianism -- that what is good for a being is based on that being's subjective self-assessment. And for all Nussbaum's talk of maintaining the dignity of beings, it seems to me that respecting individuals' perspectives is ultimately more dignified than ascribing to them a set of capabilities based on a philosopher's intuitions about what is appropriate to a creature of its species.

Stentor Danielson, 09:53, ,

6.2.06

I Am Dumb

I've written before about the travesty that is the Indian Trust Fund case, and about the way federal lands are treated as subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, but somehow it never occurred to me to see the connection between the two.

Stentor Danielson, 00:21, ,

5.2.06

The Uses and Uselessness of Civility

One of the recurring arguments in the political blogosphere is over civility. My impressionistic estimate is that 75% of blog posts and 90% of comments involve heaping either vitriol or ridicule on those who disagree. So it's inevitable that there will be periodic pious calls for civility, to cut out the swearing and ad hominems and respect the arguments of those who disagree. Various arguments are made against civility -- we need to fight fire with fire, civility is an instrument of oppression, it's important to express the rage we feel, etc. -- but the arguments for civility boil down to the pragmatic. The proponents of civility charge that the only way to make political progress is to state one's ideas in a calm and logical way, thereby engaging in real dialogue with the other side and winning them over by the force of reason.

The argument for civility is either "a steaming load of crap" or "inconsistent with what we know about human psychology," depending on what your civility preference is. Let me put it this way: have you ever seen a blogger state that their mind was changed on an issue of importance because they read one or more reasoned arguments from the other side? I've been reading political blogs for four years, and I can't recall a single example. There are some superficially suitable cases, but upon deeper examination they quickly collapse into one of several alternative cases -- 1) the blogger in question had been on the fence, not really committed to a position on the issue at hand, or 2) the change of opinion was due to other, non-rational causes (e.g. a desire to stake out an identity as a contrarian, or a wholesale ideological conversion), and their new compatriots' civil arguments (as well as their vitriolic ones!) are invoked as a post-hoc rationalization, or 3) the thing at issue was not a major question upon which very much was staked, and thus there was little to lose or gain by switching sides.

By and large, one's receptiveness to arguments is based not on the merits of the argument, but on what kind of a person one wants to be and who one wants to be allied with. One side -- even its "civil" memebers -- is not going to really listen to civil arguments coming from the other side. Arguments are rejected first, and then that rejection is justified. Rejection of a vitriolic argument will be based on its ad hominems, while rejection of a civil argument will be rejected on the basis that the opposing side must not have any logical foundation, since its best attempt failed to convince.

Does that mean civility is pointless, and that those bloggers that practice it should give up and join the rest in mockery and brow-beating? No. Civil blogging may preach to the same choir, but it has a different sermon. A civil post tells like-minded thinkers that their side's views are rooted in ironclad logic. They reassure the vitriolic crowd that their positions could be justified were they ever to find that elusive creature, the openminded opponent. The lack of response to civil posts goes to prove to likeminded partisans that the other side will listen only to force.

And of course there are those of us who just enjoy writing and reading civil posts. They play to our skills and flatter our self-concepts. But I -- and those who already agree with me, or who may come to agree with me for non-rational reasons -- recognize that the show of appealing to the other side's logical capacity is just a show.

Stentor Danielson, 15:48, ,