Adam
Prologue
When the conditions are right and sentience blooms, the sentient being has morally significant interests. He/she has an interest in avoiding unpleasant sensations and an interest in experiencing pleasure.
A sentient being with what I call intrapersonal rationality recognises that they have interests and seeks to serve those interests. If they are interpersonally rational they will recognise that other sentient beings have morally significant interests that are just as important as their own (of course is not necessary for a sentient being to be interpersonally rational for them to be afforded moral consideration by interpersonally rational beings). This is the concept of ‘equal consideration of interests’ which is an ethical stance that takes into account the interests of all sentient beings and recognises that ‘like’ interests are equally important.
From ‘equal consideration of interests’ we get to Francione’s rights theory. This theory, which is based on the concept of ‘equal consideration of interests,’ holds that if a being has morally significant interests they can’t be treated as property because property can never be balanced equitably with the interests of an ‘owner’.
And the right of an individual to not be treated as property can’t be taken away just because a mob of other sentient beings would benefit from his/her loss. Take democracy for example. Each person has only one vote and no vote is counted as being more or less important than another. It would be absurd then if an electorate could vote to take away the right of an individual to vote. It would defeat the whole purpose of democracy. Likewise, if a being has morally significant interests and hence is covered by the concept of ‘equal consideration of interests’ then it is absurd to justify treating him/her as the property of another person or persons. I’m not saying democracy is the best form of government – I am just using your familiarity with its processes to highlight the absurdity of taking away the right of a being with morally significant interests to not be treated as property, merely because of the sheer number of competing interests.
Utilitarians would have you believe that their theory is underpinned by the concept of ‘equal consideration of interests’ but utilitarianism, which holds that the right conduct is conduct that collectively maximises what is good, can treat people as property and so violates the principle of ‘equal consideration of interests’ for those people.
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Why meat is murder
I recently came across an article in The Age Melbourne magazine May 09 edition, which is, for anyone who is not familiar with the publication, a monthly magazine put out by a broadsheet Melbourne newspaper. The article was about growing anything yourself. One of the subjects of the article was Tony Faranda from Werribee South in Victoria Australia who was involved in “growing” salami for his own consumption. He’d buy three piglets at a time, fatten them up over a few months and then he or one of his sons would blow their lives into oblivion with a rifle. Mr Faranda was quoted as saying, “I enjoy looking at them. I enjoy patting them. I enjoy eating them.” He clearly has a warped attitude towards non-human animals. Mr Faranda loves what he gets from these pigs, much like a rapist loves what he gets from his victim. In the same article there is a photo of the 3 piglets that Mr Faranda will murder and the caption, which is styled like a cartoon caption, reads “These pigs will end up as salami made by Tony Faranda”. This pictorial representation is positioned by journalist Peter Barrett as comedy. Peter Barrett is flippant in his representation of this news story; he clearly doesn’t care about the fate of these innocent sentient beings and seems to derive sadistic pleasure from their plight.
The classic characteristic of a sociopath is treating others as if they were a resource. The sociopath has an inability to recognise the inherent value of individuals separate to himself and does not have a sense of moral responsibility towards other individuals. In regards to their relationship with animals, Tony Faranda and Peter Barrett are sociopaths.
In the following article I intend to prove to you that killing a sentient being, other things being equal, is wrong – irrespective of whether the being suffers during their murder. The inevitable pain involved in raising and murdering animals for food has already been addressed many times in many forms of media.
Imagine a world full of sociopaths except for one person – one lone person who possesses intrapersonal and interpersonal rationality. In other words, an ethical person. Lets call him Mr Ng. Mr Ng’s world is not unlike our human world, except we have a few less sociopaths. Now let’s imagine that Mr Ng gets killed – murdered in fact – by one of these sociopaths. Is the sociopath’s act wrong, even though there is no one to care? Of course it is still wrong. It is a direct wrong to Mr Ng. His life was taken from him and he will never experience again. Now imagine a different scenario: a world full of robots except for one ethical person. Lets call him Mr Smith. One of the robots kills Mr Smith. Is the robot’s act wrong, even though there is no one to care? Again it is wrong. The person is deprived of future experiences. They might not be aware of their deprivation, but nevertheless they have been deprived.
Do the ‘natural’ science laws of the universe cease to exist when there is no one to recognize those laws? Absolutely not. And it’s the same for moral science. The laws of ethics exist independently of humans. It just takes moral actors to see the reality. Like Newton discovered the natural science law of gravity through observation, moral actors uncover the laws of ethics through, amongst other things, reason. These laws lie dormant waiting to be discovered by a moral actor.
On face value these scenarios are different. One world is populated mainly with sociopaths and the other with robots. However, these scenarios are morally equivalent. Neither the sociopaths or the robots care that these men have died. Even though there is no one to care we, as impartial spectator, intuitively recognise that both Mr Ng and Mr Smith have been wronged. In scenario two, when Mr Smith died all that remained was robots. But a world full of robots is morally speaking the same as no world at all. Hence it is not necessary for other living, breathing moral actors to be aware of an action for the action to be wrong.
What makes an act wrong does not hinge on the presence of a moral actor to pass judgement, instead it depends on the nature of the act. The focus needs to be on the loss itself, not the knowledge of the loss. People miss the point when they focus on the fact that the person is no longer around to be conscious that they have been wronged. This is like looking for the wrong after the fact. In other words, trying to a derive the wrong from a lifeless corpse. The wrong doesn’t lie with the dead body. It lies with the action – it lies with the act of killing. And the wrong occurs at the moment of death. To end a person’s life is to deprive them of future experiences. Critics of this theory point out that it’s just potential experiences. But the fact is these experiences would have been a reality if it had not been for the person interfering with the person’s life path. That was the action that prevented the potentialities from becoming a reality. The potential will become a reality unless it’s thwarted. Much like an object will continue its motion unless friction comes into play, a being will continue to be unless thwarted by an intervenor. A murderer, cancer, cellular degeneration and accidental death can be all classed as friction. The question is: will you be the friction? Will you be the wrong?
Death for a sentient being is a case of what they don’t know will still hurt them. Imagine a community subjected to a horrific scientific experiment where their legs are secretly removed at birth. This community doesn’t know that having no legs is abnormal and the knowledge that they are abnormal and part of a science experiment is kept from them. In fact there is no word for legs in their vocabulary. For those pedants out there lets just say that robots help them with daily routines and the community believe that the robots were created by a figure of legendary status who also had no legs. The robots too have no legs, instead they have wheels to get around. The scientists who designed this ghastly experiment thought that having robots with legs may cause the community to become envious of the robots and possibly trigger a recall of latent knowledge of what has been denied to them. Despite them being unaware that something has been taken from them, it is an indisputable fact that these individuals have been deprived of normal function. They don’t need to know they are deprived to be deprived. If the scientists involved had not deprived them of normal function their lives would have been easier and they would have had a greater chance of achieving optimum happiness. Indeed there is no doubt that it would have afforded them greater opportunities and hence greater potential to achieve happiness beyond their current capacity. Once the action was taken the individuals were wronged. While awareness of what had been taken away from them would have compounded their situation, the greatest wrong is the direct wrong they were subject to when their legs were cut off which resulted in their capacity for pleasurable experiences diminishing.
The following is a fictional example, but I am sure a similar scenario has happened before. Imagine a baby was abducted by a couple who couldn’t have kids of their own when the baby’s biological parents were on holiday in China. The couple were impoverished so the child grew up in an impoverished environment. The child didn’t know she was kidnapped from her biological family as her biological parents, like her captors, were of Chinese extraction. With no exposure to the world outside her village, the girl grows up thinking that her life in the village is a normal existence for every Chinese girl, not knowing that some Chinese girls live in luxury as do her biological parents back in Australia. Her biological parents are traumatised by the loss of their daughter, but their daughter suffers the greatest loss. It goes without saying that her life in the poor village is miserable, but there is another level to her disadvantage: she has been deprived of satisfactory living standards. If she hadn’t been abducted she would have been living a comfortable existence with her biological parents. She doesn’t need to have awareness of her deprivation to be deprived. This girl has been robbed of potential.
An alternative scenario involves a young man living below the poverty line. Let’s call this man Mr Proctor. Mr Proctor was entitled to receive a significant inheritance from a deceased grandparent. Unfortunately Mr Proctor’s uncle made away with his inheritance. Mr Proctor knew nothing of his entitlements – in fact he did not expect to receive any inheritance. As far as he was concerned he had no entitlements – the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. Had the uncle not done the wrong thing and given Mr Proctor his entitlements, Mr Proctor’s living standards would have been significantly better. Irrespective of his unawareness of his loss, the man has been deprived. He doesn’t need to know what his uncle did to be deprived. We can come up with a plethora of examples to prove that a sentient being doesn’t need to know they have been wronged to be wronged. It is not the knowledge of deprivation that is the greatest tragedy, it is the deprivation itself.
If you have been asleep during the previous seven paragraphs and you still think there is no direct wrong in killing a sentient being, other things being equal, consider this: Rejecting my argument also means rejecting the argument that we should use pain reduction measures when we can, such as the use of anaesthesia, pain relievers and euthanasia in the case of incurable severely debilitating illnesses. The reason for this is that pain reduction is future focused. We are given anaesthetics prior to surgery because we know and the anaesthetist knows that if we don’t use anaesthetics we will be in pain in the future, when the surgeon gets to work with his scalpel. What makes chronic pain worse than acute pain (of the same intensity) is that it has an ongoing component; a future component. If we don’t interevene with some form of treatment or pain relief the pain will continue into the future and we will continue to suffer. Animals living with a terminal illness can be in severe pain but continue to live in agony for hours, days or even weeks. If they are euthanased they no longer endure in extreme pain. I must stress that I am talking about animals suffering from incurable terminal illnesses who are also experiencing pain significant enough to make life not worth living. If we were to comparatively analyse pain, it is not just the degree but also the length of time that is important. If I am in pain I know that I want it to stop as soon as possible. Now, not a second later.
If you, like all reasonable beings, hold that we should minimise pain when we can, then you recognise the gravity of future painful experiences and are also compelled to agree with my aforementioned argument that future pleasurable experiences must be granted the importance they deserve and will always prove to be of value to our future selves.
Just as we seek to minimise the pain in our lives – not just the degree but also the duration – we also seek to have as many pleasurable experiences as possible. Obviously I am not justifying unbridled hedonism, but we clearly recognise that the longer we live, the more opportunities we have to experience pleasurable experiences. A baby that dies has had their life cut drastically short and so is deprived of many years of future pleasurable experiences. The important thing to remember is that it makes no difference to the baby whether another baby is born exactly at the same moment as his death. The newly born baby has his own set of interests independent of the baby who died. Furthering the interests of the newly born baby does not further the interests of the dead baby. The dead baby does not have access to the experiences of the newly born baby – the new born can’t share his experiences and they certainly can’t take turns. Pleasant experiences are important because individuals, not collectives, value them and derive benefit from them; the loss or benefit only has meaning and significance to the individual sentient being. The dead baby can no longer experience, and having some other baby come along does not change the dead baby’s circumstances. Replacing the dead baby with another does not make up for the loss because the loss is to the dead baby not some magical giant receptacle.
Now back to the actions of Mr Faranda, unapologetically described in The Age Melbourne Magazine May edition. While I have already given a number of examples that prove that, other things being equal, death is a direct wrong to a sentient being, this horrendous example of animal exploitation can be used to very simply prove that intentionally killing a sentient being for personal gain is wrong. Which I will now do.
It would be great if Mr Faranda had a revelation and stopped treating animals as property, stopped murdering pigs to make salami. Unfortunately, I don’t think this will ever happen. But for argument’s sake, let’s pretend it did. Let’s pretend that on the day of the pigs’ execution, Mr Faranda stumbles across the Ethereal Blend Blog while searching for women’s shoes online. He finds Tim and Adam’s arguments irrefutable so decides to become a vegan there and then. As part of this revelation he feels the need to go outside and look at the pigs that live in his yard. He bends down to look at the pigs, but this time he does not look upon them as property. He can now see them as individuals with inherent value – a value not determined by any other person, but instead endowed by the nature of their being. Namely, sentience: the capacity to experience and further to this, the ability to give inanimate things value. As Mr Faranda is now a born-again vegan, he does not kill the pigs. The fact that he does not kill the pigs means that the pigs continue living. Day after day, they continue to experience piggy pleasures. If Mr Faranda had not turned vegan and did decide to kill the pigs, the pigs would not have experienced the piggy pleasures that they have had since that day of revelation. It is a good thing that he decided not to kill them and it would have been a bad thing had he decided to cut their lives short and therefore deprive them of future experiences. By way of simple illustration we can easily see that intentionally killing for personal gain is a direct wrong.
If, dear reader, you indulge in ‘free range’ meat then you are not absolved of guilt. In order to aquire ‘free range’ flesh you need to render an animal dead and since killing the animal deprives them of future experiences even painless methods of killing (if they exist!) are acts of murder.
Much like an object will continue its motion unless friction comes into play, a being will continue to be unless thwarted by a intervenor. A murderer, cancer, cellular degeneration and accidental death can be all classed as friction. The question is: will you be the friction? Will you be the wrong?
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Epilogue
For too long, ethical vegans (people who have the capability to cut through the cultural,social and intellectual bonds that constrain pure ethical deliberation to see the truth) have minced words and bitten their tongues in relation to their communications with omnivores about the facts of veganism. I believe many vegans don’t embrace the abolitionist position (the position that recognises that animals have morally significant interests and therefore should never be treated as a resource) because they are afraid of annoying their omnivore friends. There are no two ways about it: treating animals as merely the means to someone ends is wrong, and when the exploitation involves ending an animal’s life it is murder. This needs to be shouted out, not whispered in dark corners. We should raise the roof every time we hear a face value vegan uphold the cop-out subjectivist position of “I think it’s wrong but it’s okay if someone else does it”. It is and has always been wrong to exploit animals. It’s just been a matter of people discovering this, much like Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravity. In the dark ages and ancient times nobody was aware that exploiting animals was wrong, just as nobody was aware that the Earth was flat and the earth revolved around the sun. Rigorous, informed and objective ethical thought by rational beings will always lead to the conclusion that meat is murder.