The most influential philosopher alive?

December 13, 2004 11:31 PM

"Same-sex marriage? Euthanasia? Child's play issues in the avant-garde philosophy of Peter Singer"(Singer has been the subject of previous MeFi discussions). Having only skimmed those earlier threads, I don't know enough about Singer to usefully comment about the accuracy of World Magazine's interpretation of his views. What I found interesting was the tone of the article. The writer appears at times to bend over backwards to show that, while he thinks Singer's ideas are reprehensible, Singer himself seems like an OK guy (eg. "He approves of polyamory in the abstract but in his own life, to his credit, he has been married for 35 years to one woman"). Is World Magazine (mission: "To report, interpret, and illustrate the news ... from a perspective committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God") trying to present a balanced portrait of Singer and his views? Or is he being portrayed as a wolf in sheep's clothing? (original link courtesy of Arts & Letters Daily)
posted by e-man (63 comments total)

I think it's pretty obvious that World Magazine isn't trying to present a balanced article: "Who is this influential philosopher who seems nice?". They compare him to the villians in a C.S. Lewis novel a number of times, and they never once explain or discuss how he came to views. They merely state them, then expect their readers to say "oh, how awful".

Singer's essays are long discussions, each one setting up small items for the reader to agree to and then builds from there. Without letting the reader see the development of his Singer's argument, the article is pretty useless. There's a few other choice quotes that show the article's bias:
"Beyond even an inherent selfishness disguised as altruism, Mr. Singer's proposals for consensuality suffer from a lack of realism."
"How can Christians and others combat Singerism?"
"He has consistently tossed aside the Declaration of Independence concept that all of us are created equal." I like Peter Singer. I own a number of his books, and I enjoy reading his style of argument. This article does little (if anything) to even attempt to present his arguments.
posted by PantsOfSCIENCE at 11:51 PM on December 13, 2004

The subtext may very well be wolf-in-sheep's-clothing: crazy ideas coming from seemingly-sane people are still crazy. It sure seems like World thinks he's crazy.

I don't. Singer's philosophy allows for such things as polyamory and euthanasia, but most conservative (and they are mostly conservative) critics tend to portray him as advocating them. Many Bible-related groups have been offended by his use of genocides in the Bible (Israelites vs. Medianites, I think?) in comparison to modern genocides. Singer is also well-known for esablishing a philosophical basis for first-world responsibility to ameliorate/end third-world hunger... his One World is excellent.
posted by onshi at 11:54 PM on December 13, 2004

The author of this article is stupid and patronizing, but make no mistake, this author isn't the first to be flabbergasted by the kinds of claims that Singer makes about morality. Singer's conclusions flabbergast most reasonable people. He's probably the most hard-line utilitarian around, except maybe for Shelley Kagan, and his commitment to his moral framework leads him to make some *very* unintuitive claims... for instance, we have a moral obligation to keep lions in the wild from eating wild gazelles.

I don't buy Singer's position, but I can at least tell a philosophical story about why I think he's wrong. I don't need to invoke the Declaration of Independence.
posted by painquale at 12:12 AM on December 14, 2004

This article is the usual religious trash and a waste of time:

How can Christians and others combat Singerism? Some have tried to run him out of town or silence him in other ways, but that is ethically troublesome in our American liberty theme park.

So it is "totalitarianism" when fundynuts can't run the country into the ground, but America is a "liberty theme park" when others are given freedom of speech and thought.

Cognitive dissonants, heal thyselfs.
posted by AlexReynolds at 12:43 AM on December 14, 2004

Thyselves.
posted by AlexReynolds at 12:44 AM on December 14, 2004

and his commitment to his moral framework leads him to make some *very* unintuitive claims... for instance, we have a moral obligation to keep lions in the wild from eating wild gazelles.

This just sounded too strange, so I found Peter Singer's own words on the question:

As for wild animals, for practical purposes I am fairly sure, judging from man's past record of attempts to mold nature to his own aims, that we would be more likely to increase the net amount of animal suffering if we interfered with wildlife, than to decrease it. Lions play a role in the ecology of their habitat, and we cannot be sure what the long-term consequences would be if we were to prevent them from killing gazelles. (The way to do this, I suppose, would be by eliminating lions, perhaps by sterilization.) So, in practice, I would definitely say that wildlife should be left alone.
Source

Well... painquale's interpretation is obviously not accurate, but I have to say, Singer's actual position is challenging...

Check the source for a lot more nuance on the question.
posted by Chuckles at 1:26 AM on December 14, 2004

You can tell it's quality journalism when Whittaker Chambers is quoted like he was Voltaire.
posted by Mayor Curley at 3:55 AM on December 14, 2004

from a perspective committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God

Enough said.

Thanks for putting that in the FPP so as to save me wasting my time reading the trash.
posted by nofundy at 4:37 AM on December 14, 2004

Marvin Olasky is a deluded nut job. We've been subjected to his rants here in the local paper for years, and I'm always flabbergasted by the fact that his screeds find ink anywhere. He's kind of an ugly, middle-aged, balding Ann Coulter.
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:03 AM on December 14, 2004

Deluded nut job Olasky may be, and there's some superb material for baiting the guy in the piece, but there's also a very, very weird vibe, like a fundamentalist-meets-liberal-arts-ethos kind of thing, that I found oddly heartening when I read it. It does jerk you back and forth, as you sense . . . reason here, okay, I see some reason, some reasonableness, some argument, okay, I'm getting it . . . then BAM! WTF!? How'd Jesus end up in here? And you look at the venue and think, okay, Jesus is ALL up in here, I get it, okay, no way do I want any part of this shit, but then, it's . . . Peter Singer . . . how the hell did Peter Singer end up in this Jesus-think festival . . . and why is Singer sort of being . . . described? And why are his arguments, however oversimplified, getting any play AT ALL here?

And your brain spins and spins.

It's a worthy sort of spinning, however biased.
posted by cgc373 at 5:13 AM on December 14, 2004 [1 favorite]

Lord knows it wouldn't be Christian journalism without some boring-ass C.S. Lewis references. What do they see in that guy?
posted by Optimus Chyme at 5:22 AM on December 14, 2004

It isn't surprising to see this on the A&L Daily page. I quite like the page and read many of the things that I find there, but the perspective is more than a little bit conservative. The tone of many of the links chosen for inclusion is condescending toward new or challenging ideas, dismissive of post-War Continental philosophy and concerned that the Western Canon is being overwhelmed by tides of malevolent dreck.

All in all, the mission of A&L Daily seems consistent with a very conservative (small c) approach to not only Arts and Letters, but culture in general.
posted by OmieWise at 6:37 AM on December 14, 2004

I thought the generaltone of the article was set at the very beginning: Parental warning: This article refers to infanticide and some abnormal sexual activities.
posted by TedW at 6:45 AM on December 14, 2004

e-man, thanks for this. It's really interesting.

Geez, post some Christian talking to an Atheist, and everybody pans it. This really is an interesting, if weird, article, in the way that cgc373 describes.

And, by the way, Optimus Chyme: if you really feel that way, you should read more C. S. Lewis; he's a brilliant man with nutty followers. (Like a certain other person I can think of.) If these evangelicals had any idea of half the things in his books... for example, the moment in the Narnia stuff where a devil worshipper gets into heaven, just because he thought it was the right thing to do? Lewis seems to go as far as saying Buddhism and Paganism are legitimate ways of seeking salvation. His more interesting books are his novels, which aren't generally childrens' books; they're almost always weird and esoteric, saying lots of things about Christianity that would probably be deemed heretical if it wasn't said in parable.

Probably his second- or third- best book (behind "Perelandra" and maybe "Till We Have Faces," which is excellent, and which I still really don't understand; it seems to be about seeking the metaphysical meaning behind pagan esoterism) is the very book the guy is quoting in this article, "That Hideous Strength." It's not a very popular book among evangelicals, maybe because the goddess Venus appears at the end, spreading love all over the earth(!). That made the article a hell of a lot more interesting to me, to say the least; if this could understand "That Hideous Strength," really understand it, then he could probably actually refute Singer.

I have a feeling he's not up to it, though.
posted by koeselitz at 6:53 AM on December 14, 2004

This is a fascinating read. I have major problems with some of Singer's philosophy (as I noted, on-topic, in another one of those threads) but have great respect for his methodology and willingness to approach various ethical dilemmas without feeling like he has to sidestep any of the sacred cows that other philosophers feel like they have to justify.

That being said, the most interesting part of this article is clearly the juxtaposition of the ethical approaches of the author and the philosopher; the advocacy seems to be that 'if we can't run him out of academia, at least we should be fighting his ideas intellectually,' which is frankly a bit refreshing compared to some of the other influential Christian voices in today's American society.

The question that I am left with is what the opposition to Singer's basic societal principle is (the perhaps oversimplified, 'that which is consensual is ethical'). Is it to constrain all actors from doing that which the (presumably Christian) majority finds repugnant?
posted by norm at 7:21 AM on December 14, 2004

Singer is a philosopher. It's his job to think about things, and, I of course, report his ideas. At a more important level, his job is to make other people think. I don't for a minute think that Singer actually lives or even believes a lot of his own ideas (the point about his 35 year marriage is revealing), but he does a damn good job at stirring people up and forcing them to confront some issues.

Is being confronted with strange and extreme ideas that offensive to people? They're just ideas. I don't understand why the author of this article is so incredibly afraid of him - they don't have to do what he says, and I doubt any human alive does. Just play around with his ideas in your head, follow his logic, and use his framework to explore your own morality.
posted by Jimbob at 8:05 AM on December 14, 2004

our American liberty theme park

wtf?

Is being confronted with strange and extreme ideas that offensive to people?

For 50+% of the population, I think you can safely remove the "strange and extreme" part of your sentence without reducing its truth.
posted by rushmc at 8:14 AM on December 14, 2004

"Singer's philosophy allows for such things as polyamory and euthanasia, but most conservative (and they are mostly conservative) critics tend to portray him as advocating them"

Part of the fundamentalist agenda is a worldview that only allows for one right way. Their way, of course.

A third item follows from the others. (Indeed each part of the fundamentalist agenda is necessarily interlocked, and needs every other part to survive.) Since there is only one right picture of the world, one right set of beliefs, and one right set of roles for men, women, and children, it is imperative that this picture and these rules be communicated precisely to the next generation. Therefore, fundamentalists must control education by controlling textbooks and teaching styles, deciding what may and may not be taught.

The idea of someone allowing a certain behavior without actually advocating it --or practicing it themselves -- is completely alien to their mindset
posted by Reverend Mykeru at 8:35 AM on December 14, 2004

Jimbob: are ideas really that ineffectual? Do the things people say really have absolutely no effect on the things people do?

I'm not saying we should run around screaming that one group or another is going to take over the world. But the author of this article seemed to be right in feeling that the influence of ideas changes things.

On preview: Reverend Mykeru, there's no difference between "advocacy" and "allowance" in ethics. "I wouldn't do it, but I wouldn't mind if you did," makes no sense in this context; why wouldn't you do it? Ethics just means asking, "what would I do? What would I not do?" Ethicists who do not live by their own ethics are not ethicists. (Not that Singer doesn't live by his rules.)
posted by koeselitz at 8:58 AM on December 14, 2004

I don't for a minute think that Singer actually lives or even believes a lot of his own ideas (the point about his 35 year marriage is revealing)

You know, I personally hate green peppers, but I don't attempt to dissuade people from eating them. Similarly, just because Singer believes that polyamory is not unethical does not mean that he wishes to participate in it.

"I wouldn't do it, but I wouldn't mind if you did," makes no sense in this context; why wouldn't you do it?

Maybe he wouldn't do it because HE DOESN'T ENJOY IT!!!

Why is this so hard to understand?
posted by Optimus Chyme at 9:30 AM on December 14, 2004

RE: "there's no difference between advocacy and allowance in ethics"

... I respectfully disagree, koeselitz. I happen to believe that there are a set of behaviors that good people refrain from doing (e.g., not hurting others unnecessarily, etc.) but that there is also some philosophical sense behind the cliche "above and beyond the call of [moral] duty)." Charity is a good example, because it's one that Singer and (some) Christians speak about at length.

What strikes me as funny about your statement, of course, is that your position is far closer to Singer's, here, in denying any difference between what's ethically required of us (say, not harming others unjustifiably) and what's superogatory (say, selling all of your possessions to feed the hungry).

For Singer, every moral agent is morally obliged to minimize the suffering of sentient creatures. Period.

So, the demanding aspect of Singer's brand of utilitarianism ends up sounding eerily similar to this Nazarene carpenter dude that the folks at World Magazine claim to be such big fans of while blithely ignoring the more demanding of his explicit teachings on, e.g., poverty (see the aforementioned: sell all of your possessions and come follow me, see also: camel vs. needle, etc.).

(Off-topic, arguably: This hypocrisy is not limited to Christian ethicists; in fact, it's a more "damning" accusation when leveled against so-called Christian statesmen who actually have the power to put into practice policies that foster charity, love, forgiveness, and compassion. But for whatever reason, those don't seem to play to the base as well, so, in the words of that most deontological of punk bands, Fear, let's have a war! . Sorry. Feel better now. Carry on.)
posted by joe lisboa at 9:44 AM on December 14, 2004

Reverend Mykeru, there's no difference between "advocacy" and "allowance" in ethics.

This part makes sense, but your back-up claim (as Optimus pointed out) is neither related nor logical.
posted by rafter at 9:44 AM on December 14, 2004

This just sounded too strange, so I found Peter Singer's own words on the question

Sorry; I was too quick to deride Singer's position, and ended up being misleading. He says we can't interfere with wildlife because we don't currently know the practical consequences... we might do more suffering than good. If we did think we could do more good than harm, then it's something we would have a moral obligation to do. That's the unintuitive claim I was trying to put forth.

Infanticide is a better example of an unintuitive conclusion he reaches. But I think I agree with him on that one.
posted by painquale at 9:47 AM on December 14, 2004

The problem I have with utilitarianism is that it gets one no closer to determining ethical rules from logical principles. The concept of good is generally simply an extrapolation of what people intuitively believe, which this late in history means based on religious principles. All utilitarianism does it try to expand the influence of morality unto a larger domain. It doesn't include within its precepts the principles themselves. Justice is no longer benefiting your friends and harming your enemies in the Greek sense. It no longer contains such categories. However without such distinctions I'm not sure whether people will have any incentive to follow moral rules. There is a strong intrinsic desire among people to not just refrain from harming but to actually actively benefit their friends. However, without this category you yield a much weaker ethical product. People are no longer so passionate about ethics so one might paradoxically end up with less aggregate good. Quite simply the greatest good for the greatest number contains no clue as to how to define greatest number; greatest number of friends, or people in general, of all mammals, of all life. Depending on how you define good and number you can use utilitarianism to rationalize anything from totalitarianism to Jainism. Furthermore, good is not a fixed fungible; is it better to give a tax cut of 100 dollars to 51% of the population of people with incomes between the 49 and 100 percentile of wealth or to give a tax cut of 1000 dollars to the poorest 5% of the population? Utilitarianism would probably say the former because it it a greater number but advocates of a progressive tax structure would say the latter because there is, in this case, an inverse relationship between good and number. Finally, even if one does accept the principle of the greatest number would it not under utilitarianism be better to have a disabled infant live, not for its own good, but because by defining its life as intrinsically valuable the lives of all people are increased in value, utilitarianism should have no problem with condemning such a single youth to a life of suffering so that the lives of all people can be defined as sacred. The fact that Singer reaches an opposite conclusion demonstrates the flexibility of utilitarianism. Flexibility in a moral system is necessary only to a slight degree. The idea is to dissuade people from unethical actions which is easier to do if they believe that the proscriptions are largely inviolable. As with laws if people disagree with them they will simply ignore them, take the example of anti-drug laws. The mysterious and seemingly sacred nature of ethical rules is what gives them their sway. I'm not saying this is good or bad but everyone here intuitively knows what is good do they not? You don't have to perform any mental arithmetic in order to determine the ethical quantitative good or quantitative influence of your daily actions. Utilitarianism seems to me incapable of so deeply inculcating its laws into the mental decisions of its adherents, and without being second nature it becomes simply an overwhelming burden. Everything can be looked at as a ethical cause with ethical effects, without a ingrained sense of this people will be paralyzed under the weight of constantly assaying the ramifications of their daily actions and since their is no end to the ripples of an action you will end morality before it begins.
posted by Endymion at 10:33 AM on December 14, 2004

joe lisboa: For Singer, every moral agent is morally obliged to minimize the suffering of sentient creatures. Period

I agree. I think that's it in a nutshell. Olasky is attempting to portray Singer as amoral, which is preposterous. Much of Singer's philosophy seems completely intuitive to me.

Choosing when to end your own life, being able to have any kind of consensual relationship that you want--these seem like no brainers to me. And I've long been a proponent of animal rights/welfare.

I'm a bit squeamish about the "infanticide," though. I'm as pro-choice as they come, in every area of life, but after a person is born, it seems to me they're worth just as much as any other creature, whether s/he is perfectly formed or not. I agree that it is best to alleviate suffering and even that it's reasonable to end a life if the suffering is great and can't be helped, and a severely handicapped child will probably suffer...but man, I don't know. I think the problem is that suffering is relative and very individualized. Some people handle pain and hardship better than others. It's an enormous burden, having to choose someone else's life or death when they are unable to communicate their wishes. I haven't actually read his writing on this, and I probably should before I start arguing against it, but this is my gut reaction.
posted by apis mellifera at 10:50 AM on December 14, 2004

He says we can't interfere with wildlife because we don't currently know the practical consequences... we might do more suffering than good. If we did think we could do more good than harm, then it's something we would have a moral obligation to do. That's the unintuitive claim I was trying to put forth.

And yet if that's unintuitive that's odd, since much of our interaction with individual wildlife, including capturing and imprisoning them and taking guns and shooting them, are supposedly done because we're trying to help the wildlife in general. I actually agree that a moral obligation we might have to wild animals is unintuitive, but I think that shows how transparent are the "for the good of all" rationalizations we make about using them to entertain ourselves.

As for Singer, I stopped being able to take his brand of utilitarianism seriously when he elected to endorse the raping of animals.
posted by soyjoy at 11:01 AM on December 14, 2004

As for Singer, I stopped being able to take his brand of utilitarianism seriously when he elected to endorse the raping of animals.

Yeah, yuck-factor aside, I wouldn't be opposed to bestiality on moral grounds if other animals were capable of giving consent--which they're not. I mean, you could probably teach a chimp sign language and ask him or her if it was okay, but that's not much different than asking a child if it's okay.
posted by apis mellifera at 11:32 AM on December 14, 2004

soyjoy: Did Singer 'endorse the raping of animals' or did he construct a hypothetical situation in which 'the raping of animals' would not be impermissible? The distinction is as important as that between the construction of a hypothetical in which abortion is not impermissible and holding the view that abortion ought to be encouraged.

Have you read the work in question? I have, and being involved with animal rights activism I noticed that when the Christian fundamentalists denounce Singer (or any other thinker) for allegedly being pro-whatever in his writing, many approach it with healthy skepticism, but when a leftist/radical group does the same then it's accepted far less critically. Presumably the reverse holds true in conservative circles.
posted by onshi at 11:39 AM on December 14, 2004

Optimus Chyme, rafter: you're right, I phrased that badly.

I should have said: there is no difference between "advocacy" and "allowance" in ethics because, as the words imply a political distinction that is separate from ethics. Ethics asks, "what should we do? What should we not do?" "Live and let live," as such, is not a moral principle, as, from the very beginning, if you're asking, "how should we live?" then you're presuming to dictate to others how they should live, too.

It strikes me that when we have a knee-jerk reaction against this idea, it's probably because of our modern love of freedom. Ethics generally tramples all over that love. We probably have to find some compromise between them, don't we?

joe lisboa: I think I disagree with you in a way that is somewhat different than you think. I think you're straddling two separate worlds here; let me try to explain.

Ethics- moral thought- tries to lay out a set of rules that we must abide by, a divine law. They tell us what is "required" of us, as most people feel some sort of duty to refrain from some actions and engage in others. There is no "supererogatory" (as you call it) to these rules, no extra credit that can be gained from going above and beyond. This law might even require things that are impossible; but it must assume that everyone carries this law around in their heads, in their "conscience" or "on their hearts," however you prefer to call it. Otherwise, praise and blame make no sense; on what basis can you blame someone, unless they knew that what they were doing was wrong?

In fact, praise and blame make no sense to me, except as useful things to do sometimes. A person could express my position by arguing that no one does any immoral action willingly, but only through ignorance. I don't believe that action can be guided by anything but the intellectual recognition of some good that inheres in certain actions and is lacking in others.

This comes from the ideas of an older philosopher; but the certain carpenter from Nazareth whom you mention was not a moral teacher. He continually stressed the fulfillment of the law, the intuition of the elements of what was behind the law, and narrowed the law to its most important elements as he saw them. The blind man whom he heals in the eleventh chapter of John says: "I do not know if he was a sinner; I only know that I can see." Given that sight seems to be a symbol in John for knowledge, the meaning is clear: knowing the good behind the law is more important than following the acts prescribed by the law, and therefore knowing is the only real moral action. This is most clearly expressed in the notion that "knowing Christ" is enough to wipe away all other "sins." Christianity, properly understood, sees itself as a religion of knowledge, not of moral law; and it affirms the moral law only insofar as it sees the moral law as proceeding from knowledge.

And, yes, I don't doubt that, as you say, most modern Christians don't get this.

Also, on preview, apis mellifera: You say that asking an animal if it will have sex with you is like asking a child to have sex with you. Presumably, you mean that children, and certain other moral agents, aren't in a position to judge their own good. If so, I agree, and it should be noted that, if this line of thought is followed, it utterly annihilates the principle that morality should be based on consensus, i. e. "actions are good so long as they're consensual." I don't think, that is, that most people understand what is good for them. Morality is supposed to do that for them.
posted by koeselitz at 11:52 AM on December 14, 2004

And yet if that's unintuitive that's odd, since much of our interaction with individual wildlife, including capturing and imprisoning them and taking guns and shooting them, are supposedly done because we're trying to help the wildlife in general

No, I'm inclined to think that most people would find it very unintuitive. When we act to protect wildlife, it's usually because we've become involved in some way (for example: we killed so many wolves that deer are starting to overpopulate), or because we're trying to avoid extinction of a species altogether. Many people would think that lions and gazelles interacting in nature are just part of the circle of life, and we have no moral responsibility to them. That said, I'm willing to let this go. I'm not positive exactly where people's intuitions lie.

I wouldn't be opposed to bestiality on moral grounds if other animals were capable of giving consent--which they're not

Good lord, I hope I'm not opening up a can of worms, but I agree with Singer on this. Language isn't the only form of consent... sometimes it's possible to read clear intent off of behavior while also being sure that you won't cause any suffering. Anyway, if animals can't give consent, should we view every act of sex between animals as rape? Should we try to prevent that?
posted by painquale at 11:56 AM on December 14, 2004

koeselitz wrote:

Reverend Mykeru, there's no difference between "advocacy" and "allowance" in ethics. "I wouldn't do it, but I wouldn't mind if you did," makes no sense in this context; why wouldn't you do it? Ethics just means asking, "what would I do? What would I not do?" Ethicists who do not live by their own ethics are not ethicists.

No difference? Really?

Before I even argue this point, what it is, can you explain to me which one-size-fits all ethics you are referring to, or is there no difference between, for example, situational ethics and virtue ethics, between consequentialism and categorical imperatives?

If so, that's news to me.

But just to telescope my objection a bit, your assertion that ethics is always "what do I do?" as if it makes no difference whether the ethicist is talking about euthanasia when he does not have a mortal illness or homosexual relationships when he is not gay himself, is puzzling. In that case it's not a question of the ethicist living by his own dictum, but rather, of the ethicist shutting the fuck up because he has no standing to render an opinion in the first place.

But that's silly, and more a function of your creeping fundamentalism that assumes ethics has to be all things for all people at all times regardless., even if you have to impose it on people. With a stick, I assume.

So, which ethics are you talking about anyway?
posted by Reverend Mykeru at 12:37 PM on December 14, 2004

Good point, painquale. Furthermore, if a dog tries to lick my crotch, and I let it, is that rape?

koeselitz: I take your point, but that is not the entireity of Ethics. Ethics is both the morals and rules and the philosophical study of those morals and rules. If the stance an ethicist adopts is one of moral relativism then they are no less an ethicist (assuming they can back up their stance). Singer's stance is hardcore utilitarian, which limits the 'what should we do' to particular areas and says it's an inapropriate question in others. If there is something he is advocating, it is this stance. The fact that this allows many different types of relationships, say, indicates no advocacy for particular types, just recognition of the spectrum defined by his utilitarianism.

You are correct that there is is an element of 'presuming to dictate', namely that utilitarianism has greater alue than other systems- and this is where he must back up his ethical stance, which he does in his books (apparently, I haven't read them myself - I hated ethics at 'varsity)
posted by Sparx at 12:51 PM on December 14, 2004

For Singer, every moral agent is morally obliged to minimize the suffering of sentient creatures.
And this cannot be ensured without committing mass suicide, because every resource you or I or any 'moral agent' has ever consumed could have been used to better the life of another being, or its extraction harmed other beings ahd should have been avoided.

Either we value our survival above that of all other beings or we don't. And if we don't, then a certain Mr. Darwin takes over.
posted by darukaru at 1:07 PM on December 14, 2004

onshi - yes, I read the work in question - less than 24 hours after it was first posted on Nerve, in fact. This is not a knee-jerk reaction but one borne of a long association with and comprehension of Singer's ideas.

As to the "not be impermissible" distinction, when Singer is taking as his topic the morality or immorality of bestiality and says there are situations where it's OK, that's morally endorsing the rape of animals. You can phrase it as "not being impermissible" if you like, but since that's not the wording he used, the distinction is irrelevant. And for those who are comparing asking animals for consent to asking children, that's misleading. As Francione says in my link above, it's instead like asking slaves to consent. Sure, between an individual slave and her master, "mutually satisfying activities may develop." That's certainly conceivable, right? But in the larger context, who would not call that rape?

And all this is completely bypassing the fact that there is a communication barrier, which makes it impossible for us to say that an animal - were a situation to arise outside of the frame of domestication - is definitely consenting to this act or that act. If a dog licks your crotch, Sparx, is that dog communicating to you "I want to be penetrated?" Why or why not? Who decides?
posted by soyjoy at 1:18 PM on December 14, 2004

painquale: easy. Animals can't give consent to us, because we can't unambiguously decipher said consent. Further, in the case of domestic animals, any consent obtained would be tainted by the inequality in power relationships - an animal raised to please its owners isn't a free agent.

The unnerving thing about Singer is that with many other ethicists, when they come to a conclusion that contradicts what you might call moral intuition, they look for an explanation that will allow them to reconcile the difference. That is, they try to explain underlying reasoning behind what we "know" already. By contrast Singer is always quite clear that when he arrives at an unpalatable conclusion it is nonetheless correct, and what we "know" is wrong.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:23 PM on December 14, 2004

Reverend Mykeru: Assertions are always universal, and, as such, moral prescriptions are always universal. "It is wrong to kill someone unless it is tuesday and the rain is falling at a certain angle and the leaves are just past green" is a universal moral prescription, because it describes what is wrong and what is not in all circumstances. The fact that Kant, the most insightful modern moral thinker, disallowed certain qualifications does not mean that, even with those qualifications, moral prescriptions are not still universal. What exactly do you mean by ethics?

Moralism makes assumptions about what is right and wrong for all people in all places; otherwise, we couldn't blame anyone for anything, because "we don't know what it's like to be them; maybe it was justified." At least, what people have always called moralism does that. Maybe ethics is different from moralism.

"But that's silly, and more a function of your creeping fundamentalism that assumes ethics has to be all things for all people at all times regardless, even if you have to impose it on people. With a stick, I assume."

I hope my fundamentalism isn't only creeping; I'd like it very much to approach fundamentals, especially the fundamentals of rational thought, as they seem to be the most important thing that a human can reach for. But I think you misunderstand my point: I'm no moralist, I'm a Christian, as I said in my last post. As such, I can't abide the faith in an incomprehensible higher law that ethics/morality presupposes; I favor knowledge, pure and simple.

On preview: yeah, Sparx, you're right, the modern thinkers have all tried to make some democratic distinction between "the realm of morality" and everything else; mostly, I think, because they're not thorough, and because they have an inherited love of freedom, which they want to retain. The tension between moral law and freedom doesn't go away, sadly, and you can't draw simple lines and pretend that it will; that's what I'm trying to point out, I guess. And I'm at university, and hate ethics courses more than ever, mostly because "ethicists" are generally full of it.
posted by koeselitz at 1:23 PM on December 14, 2004

Good lord, I hope I'm not opening up a can of worms...

Yeah, I didn't want to go off on a big bestiality tangent, but, okay, here are my thoughts: I do actually agree that if you, you know, blow your dog, it's probably true that you're not doing much harm. Does your dog mind? Probably not. similarly, if you blow your 5 year old nephew, no physical harm will be done, but there may be psychological damage, so it would be unethical to do that, even if he asked you to.
Of course, penetration is something else entirely--if you penetrate your dog (or your nephew) you'll probably cause pain...but I digress.

Intentionally inflicting harm on someone else is wrong. I often think that this is the only "law" anyone really needs.

I guess certain kinds of human-animal sexual contact may not be defined as "rape", but I can't shake the feeling that they are still exploitative, and it seems to me that some kind of explicit consent would be the only way to make sure that they're not. Better to err on the side of caution when you're the one with all or most of the power. It's the unbalanced power relationship that makes the issue of consent in such situations so important to me. Using your power or authority to coerce, especially in sexual situations, is doing a kind of harm

koeselitz: "actions are good so long as they're consensual." I don't think, that is, that most people understand what is good for them.

I think most people just want to be happy (whatever that means), and yes, they go about that in some pretty bizarre ways sometimes, causing suffering either for themselves, or for others.

From my perspective, causing the suffering of someone else is unethical. Causing yourself or another willing party to suffer is unhealthy, but that seems like a seperate problem.

On preview: what soyjoy and i_am_joe's spleen said.
posted by apis mellifera at 1:59 PM on December 14, 2004

so joy : where does penetration come into it? Can women not be bestialists? Can I not become aroused by leeches on my nipples? (rhetorical question, that last one, please don't answer for all our sakes). Bestiality, like sexuality, need not be penetrative. Which creates the question I was asking, if I like letting a dog lick my genitals - why is this wrong if it's not rape. I suspect it's not an issue of power relationships, as joe's_spleen suggests, any more than a dog licking my face is (which isn't to say it's not, just that that is a minor point, not an argument against). Should all enjyable physical contact be avoided? Where and why is the line drawn?

/derailing devil's advocate - I am not a dog person and cat tongues are way too sandpapery.

Singer's conviction of his own rationalisations clearly stems from his belief that the premises he has based his conclusion upon are rational and true. To defeat them, you must prove them irrational or false, or accept their rationality. This is not unnerving behaviour in a philosopher.
posted by Sparx at 2:16 PM on December 14, 2004

Sparx, penetration is a red herring - it was just an emphatic way of making the point (in answer to your second question, you may want to read Singer's piece, as most of the benign scenarios he conjures up tend to include human women), which I must assume I did not quite get across.

The point is this - taking off from your own example: What sexual license does a dog licking your balls give you? On the premise that the dog is communicating consent of some sort, it's consent for what? Consenting to continue licking? Consent for you to lick the dog's balls? Consent to lick your balls tomorrow? How do we determine what the dog is consenting to by this single spontaneous act? From my perspective, there's no way we can, thus no informed consent possible. But if you say there's some way we can, I'd like to know where that line of what's being consented to gets drawn, and how.
posted by soyjoy at 2:34 PM on December 14, 2004

Sojoy: Ok- let's make it clean for the work-webfilter impaired.

The only consent in this situation is given by you. Do you permit the dog to lick you? Clearly the only thing the dog is communicating is that you are lickable in that area. However, if I permit the dog to continue (I give it my consent that I am, indeed, lickable in that area), it's still an act of bestiality. There was no coercion, let's assume I haven't trained to the dog to expect reward for that activity, in fact, let's assume I haven't met the dog before, it wandered into my yard where I was sunbathing in the buff. Really, it's just a dog doing what comes naturally and me letting it because it's not unpleasant.

How is this unethical? Or even non-consensual?
posted by Sparx at 2:54 PM on December 14, 2004

let's make it clean for the work-webfilter impaired.


wholly off-topic (but so is this whole discussion at this point), but how does any language make this discussion off-topic? is your employer really going to care much if you're wasting time over a graphic description of bestiality rather than an academic one?
posted by norm at 3:11 PM on December 14, 2004

Singer's essay in question is here. The basic thrust of the argument is that animals do act out sexually towards human beings in ways that make the presumed willingess of the animal involved unambiguous. However, I don't read Singer as endorsing bestiality as much as poking holes in our traditional grounds for objecting to bestiality.

Now of course, I think there are some other reasons to not engage in bestiality, but I think that "consent" is frequently problematic because it avoids dealing with issues of power.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:46 PM on December 14, 2004

This discussion is becoming incredible. It's actually an intelligent discussion on bestiality! On the internet! Who coulda guessed?

Animals can't give consent to us, because we can't unambiguously decipher said consent. - i_am_joe's_spleen

No, and we can't always unambiguously decipher human body language either. But there are cases where it's reasonably clear what intent is, even though the threat of getting it wrong still slightly exists. Not to be overly lewd, but if a dog mounts a woman, I think it's reasonable to read him as wanting to. We should not risk acting on cases that are too ambiguous, but there are cases where the ambuity is trivial.

Moreover, a dog can't even conceive of consent in any terms other than his brute outward behavior, which means he can't conceive of rape in terms other than "someone having sex with me when I don't want them to." Rape for a dog is different from rape for us. There's no possibility of bringing in the loaded and semantically complex notion of consent that exists in our society. We should not force our concepts on animals when they do not want them and could not possibly want them.

Further, in the case of domestic animals, any consent obtained would be tainted by the inequality in power relationships - i_am_joe's_spleen

Firstly, there's nothing intrinsically immoral or wrong with power relations in sexual intercourse - sex with a movie star or an authority figure is thrilling partly because it there is a power disparity. Power disparities only become a problem if they are exploited in immoral ways. So, you have to show that a human-animal relation is of the right type. Here are two different arguments that try to explain what that type could be:

an animal raised to please its owners isn't a free agent. - -_am_joe's_spleen

As Francione says in my link above, it's instead like asking slaves to consent. Sure, between an individual slave and her master, "mutually satisfying activities may develop." That's certainly conceivable, right? But in the larger context, who would not call that rape? - soyjoy

The question becomes: what do we want "free agent" to mean? i_am_joe's_spleen seems to think it's intrinsic to the animal brain; soyjoy conceives of the matter in terms of domestication. To the former, I ask: if we don't treat animals as free agents, intentional systems with desires, pains, etc., then it would be impossible to afford them moral consideration. We want to satisfy this animal's hopes and dreams, and doing so requires thinking of it as an agent. Saying that domesticated animals have been bred to have specific interests is a non-starter. We, too have been bred by natural selection to have specific interests - what matters is how they are fulfilled.

The latter issue is more tricky, but I think there's an important disanalogy between domesticated animals and human slaves.

Slaves would like to be free. Slaves are slaves because they are unable to exercise their own choices. I'm not sure I can imagine a case where a slave could have sex with a master and legitimately feel that she was not being used (does she have the option of saying no? does she feel that she has the right to?). As soon as some element of coercion comes into play, then something problematic is happening. If there is no coercion, then do we really want to think of this person as a slave? That's a tough call. What's important is that in the case of domesticated animals, it seems like we can give them this choice. If they don't want to have sex, we leave them alone; if they do want to have sex, we let them. The power relation of pet-owner doesn't cognitively seem the same as slave-master. There's certainly a power relation between owners and pets, but why call it a master-slave relation? Why not a caregiver-entertainer relation, or some such? I'm just not sure that the rights of pets are being trampled in the right kind of way to disallow sexual reciprocity.

Anyway, even if it's incorrect to have sex with domesticated animals, it might be permissible to have sex with wild ones. Singer's position is not saying that many, or even most, cases of bestiality would be justifiable. It's just to say that some cases could be alright.

Better to err on the side of caution when you're the one with all or most of the power. - apis mellifera

I agree. But that doesn't mean we should issue a categorical ban on the act (legally, yes, we probably should. Morally, we shouldn't).
posted by painquale at 3:50 PM on December 14, 2004

painquale: One of the things that bothers me about Singer is while I read a lot of his essays that end up in saying that an act is probably not as evil as we think it is, (or at least not using many of the ethical values we claim), that does not mean said act is necessarily good or ideal. The possibility that it might not be such a horrid thing to take advantage of Benji's amorous desire to hump everything that smells like you, does not mean that said sexual activity is particularly worthwhile.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 4:04 PM on December 14, 2004

Without taking sides on the issue at the moment, a better analogy, for consent purposes, might be animals and children (in terms of intelligence level, emotional capacity, and in the case of domesticated pets, power relationships.) To be blunter, if you're fine with the idea of a dog voluntarily licking your genitals but shudder at the idea of a child doing the same, what is the cause of that difference?
posted by kyrademon at 4:13 PM on December 14, 2004

kyrademon: The distinction is that animals will never evolve the kind of conscious mind that will allow them to retroactively revaluate consent. An animal has no conception of psychological harm.
posted by Endymion at 4:29 PM on December 14, 2004

kyrademon: Well, I think that we do have to make that link. I'm not comfortable with either sexual activity with dogs or children. On the other hand, I think that we run into some serious problems if we assume that both dogs and children are not sexual. My objections to pedophilia and bestiality come from an awareness of the power differences involved and the idea that it is generally a bad thing to have sexual relationships where such sweeping power disparities are involved. Not from a view that children and animals don't have sexual interests.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 4:59 PM on December 14, 2004

I agree with Singer on this. Language isn't the only form of consent...

I think the problem is that people try to use and enforce an extremely limited and anthropocentric sense of "consent," and that such a restriction is not defensible. It creates a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy if you define consent in such a way that only those you wish to be capable of giving it are capable of giving it. The cart is in front of the horse.
posted by rushmc at 5:17 PM on December 14, 2004

painquale, I am overcome. I actually, personally, don't believe the views I proposed before, so I'm going to have to leave it to soyjoy from here, who might have a better show of mustering a convincing counter than me.

i haven't had so much ethical fun in years. there is a certain... perverse pleasure in discussing the ostensibly abhorrent in dispassionate terms.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 5:43 PM on December 14, 2004

I should have said: there is no difference between "advocacy" and "allowance" in ethics because, as the words imply a political distinction that is separate from ethics.

Um, no. You might not notice the distinction, but I know I'm not alone in asserting that there is a difference between what we ought to (not/)do and what would be terribly, awfully nice of us to do, but is not required. If you have a knee-jerk reaction against this idea, it's probably because of your own theological assumptions. Oh wait, that phrasing is condescending as shit, isn't it? Funny how it feels on the receiving end of it, no?

Ethics asks, "what should we do? What should we not do?" "Live and let live," as such, is not a moral principle, as, from the very beginning, if you're asking, "how should we live?" then you're presuming to dictate to others how they should live, too.

Um, no. "Live and let live" is, as such, a moral principle. I fail to understand how "live and let live" fails some sort of universalizability test or whatever it is that you think a candidate for "moral principle" must pass in order to qualify as a presumptive dictate re: how others should live.

It strikes me that when we have a knee-jerk reaction against this idea, it's probably because of our modern love of freedom. Ethics generally tramples all over that love. We probably have to find some compromise between them, don't we?

Jesus christ. Pun fully intended. It strikes me that when "we" write in the royal collective, "we" sound like pompous asses, but I guess my judgment is clouded by my "modern love of freedom." Don't make the category mistake of assuming that all ethical systems are incompatible with a modern conception of freedom just because yours happens to be, chief.

Ethics- moral thought- tries to lay out a set of rules that we must abide by, a divine law. They tell us what is "required" of us, as most people feel some sort of duty to refrain from some actions and engage in others. There is no "supererogatory" (as you call it) to these rules, no extra credit that can be gained from going above and beyond.

Um, yes. If you assume that by "ethical systems" we mean, necessarily, some set of divine command theory, then I guess you're right. But isn't that an awfully big assumption? Like, question-begging? The whole thrust of ethical thought from the Enlightenment onwards has been to move away from this divine command theory nonsense (which Plato in his Euthyphro pretty much spanked into submission as self-refuting at best and absurd at worst), and I think the distinction I've described between what's "required" by morality and what is supererogatory jibes with the moral intuitions of most folks. I agree that appealing to such compatibility alone doesn't make for an open-and-shut case, but it's useful as a gut-check, all the same.

This law might even require things that are impossible; but it must assume that everyone carries this law around in their heads, in their "conscience" or "on their hearts," however you prefer to call it.

Ought implies can, don't it? I mean, what sort of sick deity gets its kicks from commanding us to do things that are beyond our power to do? That's textbook sadism, innit?

Otherwise, praise and blame make no sense; on what basis can you blame someone, unless they knew that what they were doing was wrong?

Because they did something they should have known was wrong? See also: negligence. Not sure how this pont connects to the rest of your post.

In fact, praise and blame make no sense to me, except as useful things to do sometimes. A person could express my position by arguing that no one does any immoral action willingly, but only through ignorance. I don't believe that action can be guided by anything but the intellectual recognition of some good that inheres in certain actions and is lacking in others.

That's absurd. That's tantamount to saying incentives don't affect behavior.

This comes from the ideas of an older philosopher; but the certain carpenter from Nazareth whom you mention was not a moral teacher.

I lose you here, and I've studied Christianity. Moral teachings are ascribed to Jesus of Nazareth in the Christian Scriptures. That may not jibe with your own theory, or whatever, but you can't argue that fact out of existence. The dude was constantly teaching, by parable, by sermon, etc., and instructing his disciples in proper conduct. I may agree with you that his ethical vision (as myopic as it may have been - dude cursed a fig tree for not bearing fruit in the winter!) is inseparable from his apocalyptic death cult eschatology or whatever, but that doesn't negate the fact that dude had explicit views on how to live - and isn't that what ethics is concerned with after all?
posted by joe lisboa at 6:41 PM on December 14, 2004

If you have a knee-jerk reaction against this idea, it's probably because of your own theological assumptions.

We were this close to having a civil and snark-free discussion before the post got pushed off the page....
posted by painquale at 8:04 PM on December 14, 2004

Sparx: The only consent in this situation is given by you.

I really don't understand why you're taking this tack, since the question at hand is whether (non-human) animals can consent. Obviously if you allow this to happen, yeah, for all intents and purposes, you're consenting, but we're not concerned here with the dog's ethical problem, only with the human's.

let's assume I haven't met the dog before, it wandered into my yard where I was sunbathing in the buff.

I'm sure you could create a situation out of bizarre coincidental occurrences (involving non-domesticated animals, of course) where the question of consent could be minimized so far as to be negligible. But again, that's not what Singer was talking about. He very explicitly references pet/owner-type relationships.

KirkJobSluder: I don't read Singer as endorsing bestiality as much as poking holes in our traditional grounds for objecting to bestiality.

Right - he's doing both, though. They are in no way contradictory.

painquale: I think there's an important disanalogy between domesticated animals and human slaves... There's certainly a power relation between owners and pets, but why call it a master-slave relation? Why not a caregiver-entertainer relation, or some such?

Caregiver-entertainer... what's the human form of that latter relation? i.e. if that's the better analogy, what is pet ownership being analogized to? Seriously, I don't get this.

And sure, again, maybe there's a scenario with a wild animal where neither the domestication nor the communication issue gets in the way, and two beings manage to have mutually satisfying sex like two ships passing in the veldt.

But I can also conjure a scenario of a wild child who's living on an island and knows not the ways of man, and never will leave the island, thus normal rules of social propriety and psychological harm are inapplicable. So if it's ethical in this one extreme hypothetical instance to have sex with this child, do we now say sure, sex with children can be OK? And if so: What if we arrive at that last phrase without mentioning the wild child at all? Because that's exactly how Singer argued it.

rushmc: It creates a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy if you define consent in such a way that only those you wish to be capable of giving it are capable of giving it.

I suppose that is a theoretical pitfall, but I would err on that side rather than the inverse, which is that if you have no way of telling whether someone is consenting, you have the right to assume that they are.
posted by soyjoy at 9:18 PM on December 14, 2004

painquale: i enjoyed reading your contributions to this thread. don't blame me, please, for koeselitz's (flame-)baiting. (the language you quoted, BTW, was my parody of a nascent snark I detected in his/her initial post - re-read it and maybe you'll see where I'm coming from on this one - if not, then I genuinely apologize for overreacting).

I'm not interested in pissing in threads, just freaked out when divine command theory is the presumed backdrop for an ethical discussion, is all.
posted by joe lisboa at 10:03 PM on December 14, 2004

Caregiver-entertainer... what's the human form of that latter relation?

I knew that this was unclear when I wrote it, but I was running out of time, so I left my argument kind of half-assed.

What I was trying to say is that the master-slave dynamic has all sorts of semantic implications and trappings that a pet-owner dynamic doesn't have. This issue is related to my comment that dogs can't conceive of rape in terms other than "someone having sex with me when I don't want them to" and rushmc's comment that people try to use and enforce an extremely limited and anthropocentric sense of "consent," and that such a restriction is not defensible.

Animals simply don't have the same rights as we do because the rights we give ourselves are tailored to our own cognition, sentience, and rationality. We often say that humans have a right to privacy. Does a parakeet? Does a parakeet care about privacy at all? Likening animals to slaves suggests that they are oppressed in the same way that slaves are, but this certainly isn't true; if we violate an animal's rights by keeping it as a pet, it is because we are infringing upon rights that are specific to that animal.

The question we should be asking ourselves is: what sort of sexual rights should we give animals? It can't be bound to our human notion of consent. If we have sex with an animal, do we violate its rights in the same way we violate a raped slave's rights or a raped child's rights?

Rape is wrong because it's psychologically (and sometimes physically) destructive. If sex with a child were as inconsequential to that child as a hug or a pat on the head, then there wouldn't be a problem at all. But the world isn't like that: sex is very much tied up with identity and our sense of security, and sex with a slave or a child is so likely to cause psychological trauma that it's just impermissible. Sexual relations with a slave, in particular, are problematic are because the slave doesn't realisitically have the ability to say no, and this is psychologically destructive. If we give the slave all the hypothetical options that are necessary for a healthy sexual relationship, including the ability to say no, then I'm not so sure the act is impermissible. In fact, I'm not so sure you could reasonably call that person a slave. Your wild child example is excellent, and much more apt, but I'm tempted to say that having sex with a Nell or a Jeannie would be wrong because we could have no idea what sort of havoc the act would play on the person's psychology. Sex is such a powerful force that there's an enormous likelihood that mistreatment will cause pain and suffering. If we could be reasonably confident that the wild child wants it, and indeed, would be enriched by it, who are we to withhold her ability to have a healthy sexual relationship?

Will sex with a pet who we can tell wants to copulate cause pain and suffering? This is an empirical question, but I'm tempted to think not - animals just don't cultivate the ideas of security and personal identity that we do and that are bound up in our reasons for thinking rape is wrong (this may be less true of dogs than other animals - we've selectively bred dogs to be very much like us and to form similar emotional attachments).

If a pet wants to have sex, and we don't think copulating with it could reasonably cause psychological damage, then it should be permissible. I think you might be sympathetic to this viewpoint when you say that "I would err on that side rather than the inverse, which is that if you have no way of telling whether someone is consenting, you have the right to assume that they are." You're just being very cautious about the answer to an empirical question. I wouldn't be quite so skeptical about what we know of the inner lives of animals... I don't see any way that we could expect a horse to have the requisite sorts of concepts. Most animals communicate desires very brutely and clearly. I don't think it makes sense to attribute to them the kind of psychological complexities that might call into question whether those behaviors constitute consent or not.

This was a great discussion. Thanks, guys.

On preview: Sorry for the snark callout, joe. I myself added more snark to the thread by speaking out against you. My apologies.
posted by painquale at 10:37 PM on December 14, 2004

I honest-to-doG never expected my FPP to lead to a reasoned discussion of the ethics of bestiality - but I love it!

MetaFilter - is there nothing it can't do? :-)

posted by e-man at 11:22 PM on December 14, 2004

I would err on that side rather than the inverse, which is that if you have no way of telling whether someone is consenting, you have the right to assume that they are.

My point is not so much that we can't determine the presence or lack of consent, but that the very notion of "consent" itself is shaky as people try to apply it in certain types of cases (e.g., animals). Here's one possibility: It may be the case that if something is not capable of understanding and/or giving consent as we define/understand it, and that therefore consent of that nature simply does not apply to it, and to do so is as futile and absurd as trying to deal with a tree as an organism subject to human ethics.
posted by rushmc at 12:07 AM on December 15, 2004

Endymion -

"The distinction is that animals will never evolve the kind of conscious mind that will allow them to retroactively revaluate consent."

I consider that a disingenuous answer, unless you honestly believe that animals and humans who permanently lack adult mental capacity should have exactly the same level of rights, which most people don't (e.g. neutering, euthanasia, use as food, etc.)

If you genuinely do believe they should have the same level of rights, I apologize for implying you're inconsistent and accept your answer.
posted by kyrademon at 1:55 AM on December 15, 2004

(joe lisboa, painquale, all: sorry about the condescension. reading my posts now, i sound like a dick. i'll be more careful in the future. i'm glad this thread turned out pretty interesting, in spite of my blathering.)
posted by koeselitz at 7:46 AM on December 15, 2004

Animals simply don't have the same rights as we do because the rights we give ourselves are tailored to our own cognition, sentience, and rationality.

Agreed. For the record, I am not an advocate of animal "rights" for precisely this reason. We don't know what is going on in animals' heads, so questions of our relations with them should be based not on some right we're "granting" them or pre-supposing on their behalf, but rather, on what we have the right to do. So for me the fundamental question we're discussing is "Do we have the right to have sex with an animal without a credible framework for that animal's informed consent?"

Likening animals to slaves suggests that they are oppressed in the same way that slaves are, but this certainly isn't true

For the purpose of the analogy, and in the way the analogy is being used, it is true. Domesticated (again, this particular point doesn't address the ships-passing-in-the-veldt scenario) animals are forced to remain in an enclosed location with their owners, and are dependent on those owners for their very sustenance. That alone is enough of a correspondence to make the question of informed consent analogously problematic. There may also be some correspondences or differences in other areas, e.g. a wider culture of "oppression," suspension of "rights," physical abuse or whatever, but all of those are irrelevant or at least tangential.

Rape is wrong because it's psychologically (and sometimes physically) destructive.

Well, no - rape is wrong because it's a violation of someone's fundamental control over their own body. That's what makes it a crime of violence. Statutory rape is wrong because the consent given is not credible - i.e. the consenter does not have standing to fully consent, and may well bear psychological and/or physical scars from "consent" that should not have been accepted as such. But those psychological and/or physical scars, again, are based on the violation of someone's fundamental control over their own body. And that latter concept is one that I think we can be pretty confident that animals understand.

Most animals communicate desires very brutely and clearly. I don't think it makes sense to attribute to them the kind of psychological complexities that might call into question whether those behaviors constitute consent or not.

We don't need to attribute psychological complexities to them to support the erring-on-the-side-of-caution stance; we only need to aknowledge that we are unable to rule out those psychological complexities. Historically, our psychological conflict of interest in evaluating animals' thought processes has led to extreme errors in exactly the opposite direction: We have asserted that we were able to tell that animals were unable to think in certain ways we could, thus proving that humans are uniquely suited and/or destined to dominate the planet. Recent science has exposed these errors as baseless assumptions (e.g. we're the only animals who make our own tools or tool kits, or behave based on a sense of justice, or think about our own thought processes) while showing that there are areas of animal communication that have been completely outside our purview. Do we now assume that despite our erroneous-assumption-filled history, we're finally able to clearly, disinterestedly interpret animals' efforts (if indeed they are efforts) to communicate with us? I would say no, we have no basis to assume that, and thus no basis to ascribe consent on behalf of an animal to one sex act or another.

It may be the case that if something is not capable of understanding and/or giving consent as we define/understand it, and that therefore consent of that nature simply does not apply to it, and to do so is as futile and absurd as trying to deal with a tree as an organism subject to human ethics.

I'll assume that "and to do so" was meant to be "then to do so," in order to make that an actual if-then statement. But the punch line to this is that I also deal with trees as organisms subject to human ethics. Not that I expect trees to behave ethically (see "rights" above), but I think the ethics of our own behavior can be called into question in dealing with trees. If a person buys a tract of land on which sits a forest of sequoias that has grown there for 2,000 years, and chooses to raze the forest in order to get a better view of the mall on the other side, am I the only one who considers this an act that is ethically wrong? Would others simply call it an act "in bad taste," or do we intuitively feel that humans' rights to destroy living organisms so frivolously are limited by ethical concerns?

At any rate, again, we're looking at this coin from two different sides. Yours seems to be that if consent is not provable, it's irrelevant. Mine is that sex without consent is rape, and it's up to the person interpreting consent to supply the basis for that certitude rather than simply opting out of the original equation. I don't know that we can reconcile these two.
posted by soyjoy at 8:54 AM on December 15, 2004

Say, let's leave the sex out of it entirely.

Hypothetical situation.

You, for whatever reason, are a person with a repulsive personality and are unable to make/keep any human friends. So you turn to dogs to supply your companionship. You take care of the dogs quite well, feeding them regularly and keeping them healthy. But they are your only source of companionship. You talk to them even though they can't answer back.

Are you exploiting the dogs? Is it fair to keep them around when no human beings willingly put up with your company? Do they consent to being your companions, or do they just stay because you give them easy meals?
posted by darukaru at 9:38 AM on December 15, 2004

I'll assume that "and to do so" was meant to be "then to do so," in order to make that an actual if-then statement.

Yeah, I mangled that a bit on edit.

am I the only one who considers this an act that is ethically wrong?

I guess it depends whether you think that aesthetics are an ethical consideration. Just keep in mind that it is your human value that a 2000-yr-old tree deserves more consideration than a week-old grass. What rights should something be granted if it doesn't have the awareness to demand them for themselves? And to what rights is something entitled simply because it is "alive," and what additional rights should be reserved for the sentient and self-aware?
posted by rushmc at 10:14 AM on December 15, 2004

Sojoy: Thanks for those links, wicked cool!
posted by Sparx at 12:14 PM on December 15, 2004

darukaru, the consent issue is not usually invoked as relevant to the broader framework of live-in companions. But as a rule, animal activists tend to take the point of view that whether or not they agree with the institution of domesticated animals, it's better for a given animal that it get to live than die in a shelter. But that's why they don't buy animals from breeders/puppy mills.

rushmc, I'm not sure it's mere aesthetics. If someone destroyed all the grass on an entire continent, I'd find that an ethical problem too. However at that point it becomes difficult to say whether I'm confining it strictly to the grass blades or because it would impact so much on the ecosystem at large, including sentient animals. Regardless, though, just to be clear, I'm not in favor of granting "rights" to any non-human entities at all. Nothing is entitled to rights simply because it is alive, but our behavior toward live things (and our notion of our own rights regarding them) should take that into account to whatever degree is appropriate.
posted by soyjoy at 9:30 PM on December 15, 2004