tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post113374554937488561..comments2023-10-29T10:32:36.914-04:00Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: Freak intelligence, marginal cases, and the argument for ethical vegetarianismRichard Y Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-31566609688450922382010-10-20T19:46:31.737-04:002010-10-20T19:46:31.737-04:00[Alex Melonas writes in:]
It seems to me that the...[Alex Melonas writes in:]<br /><br />It seems to me that the Argument from Species Normality begs the question because you are treating X as though X possesses a quality/characteristic that X, <i>objectively</i>, does not. Therefore, Quo’s (the hypothetical flesh eater) counter-argument, i.e., “enjoying the human form of life – even if, in a particular case, the mental faculties that are involved in that form of life are undeveloped or frustrated or damaged (perhaps irreparably) you are obligated to treat [“marginal cases”] differently from the way you would treat an animal; for animals the place occupied by MRR isn't empty or inaccessible; it just doesn't exist,” DOES NOT logically follow. Use of an “Aristotelian categorical” to respond is simply an “Aristotelian leap”; to wit, it moves from an objectively verifiable characteristic to <em>telos</em>, which, in the final analysis, is sophism because it fails, by design, to respond to the initial logical problem: How do you justify treating X as if X had a “potentiality” that X, objectively, does not have?<br /><br />[end quote]Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1134079772088989792005-12-08T17:09:00.000-05:002005-12-08T17:09:00.000-05:00D'oh. Of course my previous post was supposed to b...D'oh. Of course my previous post was supposed to be that the two-legged dog had potential-four-leggedness.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1133916111063334182005-12-06T19:41:00.000-05:002005-12-06T19:41:00.000-05:00So if a dog only has two legs, it still has this s...So if a dog only has two legs, it still has this species proprty: supposed-to-have-to-legs. You can call it potential-two-leggedness if you want, but it is the sort of potential that can never be realized in the actual world. <BR/><BR/>So if, for example, we had (perhaps as the result of a promise) an obligation to provide a set of winter leggings for a typical dog, that would involve and obligation to create four leggings. For this dog, however, despite its potential-two-leggedness, you'd only make two. <BR/><BR/>So it seems to me that it is still possible to make a general case against MRR unless there is a plausibe standard that is about potentials of this kind - that is, potentials that can never be realized. While realizable-potentials may be morally relevant, I seriously doubt that unrealizeable-potentials are. If that's right, then this appeal to species normality doesn't really seem to help.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1133802943954994012005-12-05T12:15:00.000-05:002005-12-05T12:15:00.000-05:00Alex, I'm somewhat discomfited by the Aristotelian...Alex, I'm somewhat discomfited by the Aristotelian categoricals myself, but as a non-philosopher I'm not sure how qualified I am to comment on them at length. On the other hand, it seems like we might be able to excise them from the argument in a straightforward way.<BR/><BR/>It seems like the point of horn (2) is not so much the actual moral conclusion as needing a way to stop ourselves from haphazardly killing humans for little reason because they may lack MMR. After all, maybe having MMR right now really is the only thing imparting an organism moral status and it's perfectly ok to do whatever you please with something lacking it; we'd just like to avoid the hairy-seeming conclusion that killing (at least some) people for little benefit is ok. Further, without getting into MMR's details specifically, it certainly seems like all the candidates are somewhat murky, hard-to-test properties. And of course I wouldn't want to kill something that had MMR, so it probably makes sense *as a matter of policy* to avoid killing humans for little gain, as there's no way I can know for sure that some particular human lacks it.<BR/><BR/>Now, this doesn't save you from the point of horn (2), but it seems to me to blunt it to well within acceptable limits.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1133789702016462232005-12-05T08:35:00.000-05:002005-12-05T08:35:00.000-05:00Ok, two (main) questions:Firstly, why does the fac...Ok, two (main) questions:<BR/><BR/>Firstly, why does the fact that the paradigm cases of an object-type have a certain property commit us to saying that all objects of that type have that property? (e.g because paradigmatic humans are morally relevant, all humans are morally relevant) - won't this commit you to (for example) the idea that all humans have the property of 'having two arms' because paradigmatic humans do? <BR/><BR/>Now, I suspect that you'll reply that I've missed the point of your argument since I've not mentioned any of your "aristotelian categoricals" - the paradigm human is defined by some human telos.<BR/><BR/>But the notion of "aristotelian categoricals"/"telos" conflicts wildly with a modern scientific worldview, and we can hardly justify redeeming it because it achieves some cuddly ethical conclusions. (Second key question) Don't you have a give an independent reason to believe in these categoricals first, and then you may be entitled to refer to them to establish conclusions elsewhere.<BR/><BR/>Put simply, you surely can't justify a controversial conclusion by appealing to a more controversial premise (and nor justify the premise because it leads to your favoured conclusion).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1133787994889437042005-12-05T08:06:00.000-05:002005-12-05T08:06:00.000-05:00Nicely said. One problem that anti-meat types hav...Nicely said. One problem that anti-meat types have is that their arguments don't ring true and as a result, most people they are trying to convince just discard them.<BR/><BR/>Many good positions suffer from bad arguments that actually convince people not to listen.<BR/><BR/>Nice to see someone thinking through a set like this.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1133770552481404012005-12-05T03:15:00.000-05:002005-12-05T03:15:00.000-05:00I think the human faculty that matters in this cas...I think the human faculty that matters in this case is totemism. It's uncivilized not to abide by any food taboos whatsover, and it's unsophisticated to expect everybody to share the same taboos.<BR/><BR/>How do we explain Arthur Dent's aversion to eating the Ameglian Major cow? Rule #1 of food avoidance: Don't eat anything that talks to you.<BR/><BR/>Rule 1a, Don't eat anything that's spoken for, is equally binding, but to be bound by it one must be in communication with whomever is doing the speaking for, and one must accept the speaker's authority in every sense.<BR/><BR/>Rule 1b, Don't eat anything that's spoken against, is a logical extension of 1a.<BR/><BR/>Rules 1a and 1b, taken by themselves, invite us to imagine whether there can be food taboos in the absence of a totemic relationship. I believe they are subordinate because a purely rational avoidance of certain foods wouldn't be a proper taboo. If we adhere to the doctrine that authoritative statements can or should be rationally questioned, we cannot do so from within the totemic relationship, even if, in practice, we question authority while we avoid eating certain foods. <BR/><BR/>Is it ethical to ask other people to share your taboos on the grounds that theirs don't stand to reason? Of course not. If you believe your food avoidances are particularly reasonable and not particularly totemic in origin, then the equation changes somewhat. Assuming you had the most rational diet imaginable--which seems a little far-fetched, but just assuming--, would it then be ethical to ask others to violate their convictions for the sake of a rational diet? If it were just a case of physical suffering or discomfort, we could say that the end result might be worth any temporary displeasure. But this isn't the primary argument of the vegan ethicist, who is more concerned about kindness than reasonableness. Yet the vegan's proposed diet must be defended on the basis of reason, lest we suspect it of being a case of a rather broad sort of totemism. or just plain arbitrary.<BR/><BR/>So let's ask, Why don't we show kindness to eggplants? Putting it another way, if we could be cruel to eggplants, would it be wrong? I think so. Is it possible that we have some doubt about whether it's possible to be cruel to eggplants? <BR/><BR/>Is it wrong to destroy any form of life for no good reason? Why? Because somebody else might have a use for it? That seems pretty after the fact.<BR/><BR/>I'll provisionally stand by the intuition that it's wrong to destroy any organism for no good reason. What's a good reason to destroy an organism, then? To eat it, naturally. If you have good reason to suspect that the organism you want to eat is capable of suffering, then you ought not treat it cruelly. Perhaps you should also avoid eating it. But if you would also avoid eating the Ameglian Major cow, then there's obviously something more to your food avoidance than you're letting on. Whether we should avoid eating certain organisms, and whether we should avoid treating animals cruelly may be two very different questions.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com