Species Favoritism

In the comments to my previous post, Joel Monka raises a different sort of justification for speciesism. I made a pretty flip response in the comments, but I decided I ought to pull it out onto the main blog to deal with it at more length. Monka said:

What about speciesism that is not concerned with "moral" worth? I do not consider mankind to be morally superior to other species- but it is MY species, and I will favor it, just as I favor MY wife over other women, or MY family.

I'm not entirely certain what he means by describing this argument -- I'll call it the "favoritism argument" -- as not being "moral." It could be that he thinks favoritism is an irresistable instict that people will follow regardless of moral exhortations -- which I think is empirically false. It could be that he is asserting that in some cases he will simply insist on disregarding the demands of morality -- which takes us deep into "why should I be moral" territory and nihilism. Or, most interestingly from a blog-about-it perspective (and most likely) he means that it is not a moral consideration in the narrow sense by which "morality" refers specifically to universalistic, relatively context-insensitive rules, which are being balanced against particularistic claims. I would call such claims moral as well, but that's just a semantic dispute. The interesting thing here is the substance -- are there particularlistic claims that humans, by being of the same species as the actor, have that override universalistic duties to other species?

Monka provides an example in which the importance of particularistic claims seems obvious -- he will favor "MY wife" over other women. In my response, I raised an example in which I think we'd agree the particularlistic claims do not apply -- favoring people of "MY race" over people of other races. The question, then, is where "MY species" lies on the spectrum defined by those two endpoints.

An important consideration to note is the difficulty of defining which category is relevant in such invocations of favoritism. Take, for example, making a choice between a cow raised on a farm down the street here in Arizona, and a human in New York who wants to eat it. I could favor the human, who is a member of "MY species." But I could also show favoritism to residents of "MY state," regardless of species, and discount beings living far away. After all, while the New York human and I have similar DNA, the Arizonan cow and I have lives that are entangled -- through sharing a local ecosystem -- that in some ways is more similar to the type of closeness by which I would claim justification for favoring "MY wife." One reason that showing favoritism toward "MY wife" seems straightfoward is that the MY-ness of one's spouse is something that's deliberately institutionalized -- we have a whole set of practices by which we pick out a person and commit ourselves to showing favoritism toward them.

The reason that favoritism is often relevant and justified is that there are certain goods that can only be secured through allowing favoritism. Sometimes this is for pragmatic reasons -- for example, I would be justified in working to improve the civic culture of Casa Grande rather than of some other city that may objectively need the help more, because being a resident of Casa Grande gives me access to information and connections and saves on resources as compared to trying to help out another city, whose residents would on the same grounds be justified in helping out their city in preference to Casa Grande. Other times it's because showing favoritism intrinsically produces certain goods. In the spouse example, the kind of closeness and intimacy that makes marriage worthwhile can only be obtained by singling out a small number of other people (most commonly just one) to engage in favoritism with. On the other hand, the benefits produced by favoritism toward one's own race are either intrinsically illegitimate, outweighed by the disbenefits, or quite capable of being shared with all races without being diminished or undermined.

So the question then becomes, are there those sorts of favoritism-dependent goods in the case of speciesism? I don't think there are, but perhaps someone else has an argument for why it's intrinsically good to favor other beings that have a specific degree of genetic similarity.

Another consideration is that particularistic justifications are not absolute. I can favor my wife by buying her diamond earrings* while not buying earrings for any other women. I cannot, however, murder another woman and take her earrings to give to my wife. The justification for favoritism is not strong enough to override the universalistic prohibition on murder. So in the case of favoritism-based speciesism, we would need to establish not just that there is a particular good that can and should only be gained through showing species favoritism, but we would also need to assess that favoritism's strength against universalistic claims of animal rights. It may be that it's OK for humans to show favoritism to other humans if, say, you're in an overloaded lifeboat and have to throw either a human or a dog overboard, but not OK to favor humans if those humans just have a craving for a steak.

*Or I could if she a) wore jewelry often and b) had her ears pierced.

Speciesism Hurts Humans Too

Animal rights arguments typically frame themselves as challenges to the prejudice of speciesism -- the improper use of species membership as a marker of moral worth, parallel to sexism, racism, etc. Attempts to justify speciesism tend to be circular or question-begging appeals to the very speciesist intuitions that animal rights arguments are meant to challenge (the equivalent of showing an atheist 2 Timothy 3:16 to prove that the Bible is true).

It's generally accepted that speciesism benefits humans -- it gives us the psychological benefit of being able to feel exalted above other beings, as well as the physical benefits that come from exploiting animals for various purposes, particularly food. What's more, speciesism can specifically benefit those humans whose status within humanity is lower. People of color, women, disabled people, etc. can all demand an end to their oppression by pointing to the fact that they are just as much Homo sapiens as whites, men, and non-disabled people.

But it seems to me that speciesism hurts at least some humans, as well. (I should caution here that I'm not positing "speciesism hurts humans too" as a primary reason to oppose it, any more than "patriarchy hurts men too" is a primary reason to oppose sexism -- indeed, to treat oppression's negative effects on the oppressor as particularly important seems to reproduce that oppression by continuing to make the oppressor's interests and perspective central. This conclusion is mitigated somewhat when the hurt hits different members of the oppressor group in different ways, because then it has as one effect relieving sub-oppressions within the larger oppressor group. So we can contrast the argument that sexism hurts all men by reducing their ability to love (less important) with the argument that sexism hurts men because effeminate men are mistreated (more important, although still not as important as the greater level of mistreatment that sexism causes toward women).)

In order to uphold a moral hierarchy between species, speciesism must homogenize within species. Rather than thinking in terms of individual creatures, speciesism tells us to treat each individual in accordance with the archetype for that species. Thus the "marginal cases" of individuals that deviate from the species norm, on which so many animal rights arguments rest, are ruled morally irrelevant.

Setting up this single archetype of humanness is detrimental to those humans who do not, or do not want to, fit it. They are simultaneously assured of their rights and reminded that they only get them by proxy since they are not individually deserving of them.

This homogenizing aspect of speciesism can persist even when animal rights are granted. For example, Martha Nussbaum advocates greater rights for animals than Western society allows currently. But she also defends speciesism. She asks us to imagine a person with a case of Down's syndrome whose severity places that person's mental functioning on the same level as that of an adult chimpanzee*. She says the human's case is tragic in a way that the chimp's is not, because the human is deprived by the disease of the higher functionings that normal humans have, whereas the chimp has the normal functionings that you would expect from a chimp. The human is thus entitled to interventions that would improve their functioning (such as intensive therapy and classes), whereas the chimp is not.

Nussbaum's conclusion seems wrong to me. In choosing a person with Down's syndrome as her example (as opposed to, say, a person who sustained brain damage in a car crash), she actually weakened her argument. Down's syndrome is a genetic condition, which the person has had since conception. Being a normal human or a normal chimpanzee are, likewise, genetic conditions. So it's unclear how you would support, in a non-question-begging way, the idea that Down's syndrome is a tragic deviation whereas chimp-ness is normal. Indeed, given the huge population of humans as compared to apes, one could say that chimpanzees are tragic deviations from the norm for members of Family Hominidae.

Speciesism is often analogized to racism, but I think an instructive parallel can be drawn with sex. In most cases, having either male or female physical sex characteristics is not tragic, and no-one would think of wanting to change those characteristics. But in some cases -- both male and female -- those sex characteristics are tragic and there is consequently a reason to change them. I'm talking, of course, about the difference between cissexual and transexual people. The point to note here is that the difference between trans and cis is a subject-centered one made by the person themselves ("I feel comfortable/uncomfortable with the sex organs my body has"), not an objective one based on whether their physical condition is deviant or normal for their category.

To take the trans/cis idea back to the Down's syndrome human versus normal chimp scenario, we have to imagine four cases. A person with Down's syndrome who sees themselves as deviant and wants to be normal is tragic, just as Nussbaum says. But imagine if we were dealing with a person with Down's syndrome who is quite happy with their condition, and has found a form of flourishing consistent with it, and would not want to be made normal. What sense would it make to insist to this person that they are deviant and tragic? On the other side, I would assume most chimpanzees don't aspire to normal-human-ness, and thus having a chimp brain is not tragic for them. But we can imagine a creature who is some sort of "chimp-to-human transspeciesist," saddled with a chimp's brain but wanting to be a normal human**. Such a case would be tragic despite the "normalness" of this creature's brain, and I think we would have a prima facie reason to fulfil the desire to be human if it were possible.

* I have no idea whether this would be a normal, severe, or mild case of Down's syndrome, but my future references in the post to Down's syndrome are meant to apply to this particular chimpanzee-type-functioning level of the condition.

** Perhaps because they were raised in a human home, and thus identify with their human foster parents. I seem to recall reading some things that suggest that apes that have been taught language sometimes prefer the company of humans to that of other apes. This raises some potentially interesting ethical issues about pets that "think they're people."

Vegetarianism and Privilege

Elaine Vigneault points to a recent survey showing that, within the 2.3% of Americans who don't eat meat, whites, blacks, and Latin@s are pretty evenly represented -- in fact, whites are less likely to not eat meat than people of color*, albeit by a statistically insignificant margin. Vigneault says that this disproves the idea that "vegetarianism is white privilege." I think a bit of nuance is in order.

First, we have to be clear on what the poll showed. The racial breakdown is only given for whether people don't eat meat -- but the poll also asked separately about eating poultry and seafood. So it may be that people of color are more likely than whites to eat poultry and/or seafood but not red meat, and that makes up for their lower likelihood of being true vegetarians. This is especially plausible given that there is probably a disproportionate percentage of people of color who give up meat out of economic necessity rather than ethical commitment.

Second, the claim that "vegetarianism is white privilege" (I've much more often heard it charged with being class privilege**, but a similar set of considerations would apply) is about more than what percentage of what kind of people do it. The dominant presentations of vegetarianism in our society are framed in a white middle-class way. Here I'd draw a parallel with feminism -- it's still fair to say that the dominant presentations of feminism in our society are laden with white and middle/upper-class privilege, even though women of color are no less committed to gender equality and justice. The question of who has the most power to define what vegetarianism is all about remains even if all groups are interested in the underlying principles.

*The poll didn't mention races other than the three largest ones.

**The poll doesn't give a breakdown by income, but it does suggest that higher levels of formal education are associated with (statistically insignificant) higher levels of non-meat-eating.

Does Vegetarianism Make A Difference?

In addition to the substantive arguments against vegetarianism (i.e., arguments that conclude "therefore animals don't have (enough) rights or interests to outweigh my desire to kill them for food"), I sometimes encounter a strategic argument from the left. The strategic argument, which is also made against other forms of "ethical consumerism" like buying free-trade coffee or boycotting Wal-Mart, goes something like this: ethical consumerism is about changing your personal choices, but what is needed to truly address injustice is activism directed toward collective action to change social structures.

With respect to this strategic argument, we can set out a continuum, on which both of the extreme ends are obviously false. One extreme -- often endorsed, for the sake of hyperbolic impact, by critics of ethical consumerism -- says that personal choices in the market make no difference at all. If that were true, we'd all be drinking New Coke. On the other hand, only someone in the grip of extreme free market mythology would believe that personal choices in the market are entirely sufficient to bring about any desired social change. Given that the world is not made up of fully-informed rational egoists experiencing no transaction costs, collective action aimed at structural change is a critical part of any social movement.

The question, then, is: how much of a difference does (a particular instance of) ethical consumerism make? Does it make enough difference that it should be pursued at some cost (in, at the very least, foregone convenience and time spent thinking about it)? I think the left strategic criticism of ethical consumerism tends to undercount the amount of difference it can make by being misled by the term "ethical consumerism" into imagining that whatever impact it has is going to fall within the parameters suggested by the free market mythology. Within those parameters, the impact of ethical consumerism qua reduction in demand/profit is often quite small (though as mentioned above, not non-zero). But it also has other forms of impact. And vegetarianism in particular, I think, carries the potental for these other forms of impact farther than most ethical consumerism.

What would be the end result of the collective action proposed as a replacement for, or at least supplement to, ethical consumerism in the case of vegetarianism? It would be the elimination of the practice of raising and slaughtering animals for food. Were this to be achieved, we would all then have to be vegetarians. This would be a significant shift in how we organize our way of life. Food is such an intimate part of life that major changes in it necessitate major changes -- at the most basic level, acquiring new understandings of how to plan and cook healthy and tasty meals. Present-day ethical consumerist vegetarianism serves an important role in working through those issues of how to have a meatless life, and inducts people into what has been learned.

The change that vegetarianism requires also creates an inevitable sort of witnessing for the cause. Because food is central not just to how we live our individual lives, but to how we socially engage with others, it's hard to be unobtrusively a vegetarian (and even more so a vegan). Having people around modeling the end-product of a social change draws attention to the issue and accustoms others to see the animal rights position as at least reasonable and worth treating respectfully -- widening the Overton window -- aside from any explicit debates or conversions.

Contrast what I've said about vegetarianism with another example of ethical consumerism -- boycotting Wal-Mart. The end product of that struggle is to either drive Wal-Mart out of town or get it to reform its business practices. These things surely make a big difference to the intended beneficiaries, e.g. workers farther back in the production chain. But it doesn't make a huge qualitative difference in one's life whether you got your laundry detergent and jeans from Wal-Mart or you had to go all the way to K-Mart or Spag's* for them. Thus, the impact of this type of ethical consumerism is mostly limited to the market principles suggested by the word "consumerism."

So even if vegetarianism's direct impact on the size of the meat industry is negligible (which I don't think it is, but for the sake of argument), it is valuable in laying the groundwork both for starting the necessary collective action, and realizing the gains that that collective action would ultimately win. The left strategic argument is a useful corrective to people who -- seduced by the free market mythology -- imagine that their personal food choices constitute the be-all of activism. But by it does not rebut the idea of vegetarianism as one significant part of an animal rights agenda.


*I went to Wikipedia to get a link explaining Spag's, only to find that it apparently closed shortly after I left Worcester. This makes me sad, not because I thought the store itself was so great, but because it was symbolic of the spirit of being a real, loyal native of Worcester.

Are there any serious intellectual counterarguments to animal rights?

I would be very interested in finding one, because my academic reading on the subject (which is admittedly at the equivalent of "one-semester seminar" level, not "comprehensive exams" level) has failed to turn up any. (I'm defining "animal rights" broadly here as any position that grants animals enough consideration to make it impermissible for humans to raise and slaughter them for food under normal circumstances, even if they don't get full equality or "rights" sensu strictu.)

The point has been brought home as I read Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum's recent edited volume Animal Rights. One would think that two scholars of their intellectual capacity and international renown would be able to solicit the strongest available pieces to include in their book. And since the book came out in 2006, they can draw on the very latest thinking on an issue that has commanded great public attention (unlike, say, someone trying to find rebuttals a year after Animal Liberation was published). And they've certainly found some scholarly heavyweights, with no less than Richard Posner writing one of the anti-animal-rights chapters. Nevertheless, at the halfway point of my reading, the results from the antis are almost laughable.

The aforementioned article by Posner, for example, is largely an appeal to intuition. Posner says that his instincts tell him that eating meat is fine, and therefore he refuses to grant any normative weight to philosophical arguments that might run counter to his inclinations. Peter Singer has a response chapter that pretty effectively demolishes the absurdity of Posner's attempt to create an argument against arguments. Singer doesn't mention that Posner fails in the opposite direction as well. He as much as admits that by his own reasoning, slavery and women-as-property were truly moral as long as (some ill-defined group of) people instinctively thought they were OK. If Posner is right that animal rights arguments are likely to be impotent in the face of our carnivorous intuitions, then surely his brand of slavery-excusing crude moral relativism is likely to be even more impotent in the face of our instinct that moral rules mean something*.

A later article by Richard Epstein (maybe it's something about the name "Richard" ...) is even worse. I can barely make out what, if anything, he's arguing. The strategy of the article seems to be to throw out any half-baked seeming problem or not-immediately-obviously-answered question prompted by the animal rights idea, hoping that one of them sticks. The best developed of them is the absurd assertion (disguised a bit by focusing on domestic cats -- which, contrary to an apparently popular view among animal rights opponents, not all animal rights proponents are opposed to -- rather than, say, factory farmed cows) that animals are happier being exploited by humans than running wild. I have an uncharitable mental image of Epstein red-faced and stammering at having an unthinking assumption challenged, flailing about for some rebuttal that will allow him to restore his previous mental balance**.

As it happens, I have actually encountered some intellectually serious counterarguments to animal rights. But they're not going to be of much help to most people who would like to see the animal rights position rebutted, because they come from radical ecocentrists. Their argument is not that animals don't count, but that so many other things -- trees, ecosystems, geological formations, the process of evolution itself -- do count that the model of interests and rights that we accord to humans and that animal rights proponents want to extend to animals becomes unworkable. (Most of these ecocentrists, out of fear of being labeled "ecofascists" who might countenance massive human die-offs if it were necessary to protect nature, pull their punches by retaining such a traditional rights-scheme for intra-human matters -- but they thereby expose themselves to the animal rights argument at that point within their larger system.)

There are certainly silly arguments made by ecocentrists (for example, Holmes Rolston III, one of the leading ecocentrists, has tried to argue that eating meat is morally good because it gives us another route through which we can interact with nature). But they at least seem to be making an attempt to engage with animal rights as a serious position, unlike the "but eating meat feels so right!" whining of committed anthropocentrists like Posner.

*Posner's chapter does give me further evidence for my long-standing suspicion that conservative hyperventilating about leftist moral relativism is of the "doth protest too much" variety, since when pressed conservatives seem so willing to resort to patently relativist invocations of intuition and tradition.

**Epstein does have one good early point, which is that animal rights authors' frequent claims that animals, slaves, and inanimate property have been treated precisely the same are false. But showing that the law did not in fact see horses as precisely identical to cars is only a tiny step toward making a case that the further protections animal rights proponents are asking for are unjustified.