Ethical Imperialism

“Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck
with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.”

– William Hazlitt (1878 – 1930)

Our society is forged upon ideals of the sanctity of human life, though paradoxically the chief authority of the age, the decontextualised rationality of science, upholds no such belief.  That the life of the individual human is more valuable than that of another species, let alone that it is somehow ‘sacred’, is a notion in direct contradiction to the West’s founding ontological model, namely the theory of evolution, and is, as many have observed, largely derived from archaic theological and philosophical separations of humanity and ‘nature’.

The implications of this are far-reaching, but cannot be reasonably accepted.  The current strategy is to try to widen the privileged domain of ‘humanity’, granting citizenship to some genetically similar and charismatic mega-fauna, such as the higher primates.  Still the arbitrary factors – language, transmitted learning, tool usage, self-recognition, etc. – that once accounted for humanity’s self-separation from the rest of creation are employed here.  Other life, meanwhile, remains unquestioningly of lesser value.

What is the future of such attempts at ethical imperialism?  Can other species be given the rights of humans, and should they be?  Would they want them?  Applied ethics works solely as an anthropocentric model of customs and values.  Human beings, by virtue of their evolutionary past, are not geared towards the protection of other species (except perhaps for domesticates, most of which enjoy protection only preceding predation).  A human ethical code is thus heavily skewed.  For humans, operating within the dual streams of evolution and ethics, existence (specifically, social interaction) is an unceasing trade-off between ‘natural’ (evolved) and ‘cultural’ (moralised) behaviours.  One example is the ‘natural’ act of rape, which is morally objectionable in most human cultures.  No other species exhibit such dynamic restraints on their behaviour - they are, if you like, immersed solely in the evolutionary stream – and so should arguably not be afforded human ethical consideration, ‘less in a completely revised fashion.

What alternatives exist to extending the boundaries of personhood and its concomitant system of ‘rights’?  It is now widely believed, if not with any demonstrable change in attitude, that humans, animals, plants and other life forms have evolved from the same stock in a process that began around 3.7 billion years ago.  One might fairly suggest, therefore, that all life is in fact of equal status.  Extending the logic of ethics, one might well conclude that our interactions with other life forms should not exhibit preference or prejudice, also known as speciesism.  Needless-to-say, such a position is untenable.  Most life-forms depend on the consumption of other life for their continued existence, and this is often only accomplished through cooperation with other members of the same species (e.g. pack-hunting).  Preference and prejudice, it seems, are part and parcel of existence. 

If other species can not reasonably be granted human moral status, should humans’ ethical codes follow those of the rest of the natural world?  In short, should ethics exist at all?  Such a question requires a detailed understanding of morality’s evolutionary context.  Darwin likened human morality to the altruistic behaviour of other social species, suggesting that, as for meerkats and flocking birds, altruistic acts, though of little or no benefit to the individual, are adaptive at the level of the group:

It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and advancements in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another.  There can be no doubt that a tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection (Darwin, C. 1871.  The Descent of Man. New York: Appleton. p.166).

For Darwin, morality represented not humanity’s most vital break from the tyranny of nature, as some still hold, but rather an evolved response to inter-group competition.  As such, it was not associated with the belief in the immutable sanctity of human life, which owed its existence to the dualist epistemologies of Judeo-Christian doctrine and Cartesian philosophy.  Instead, moral tendencies functioned, at least initially, as a means for ensuring group survival.  The human propensity for unselfish acts thus stems from an innate capacity for social cooperation in the name of one’s family, tribe or clan.  It is neither inclusive of other species nor indicative of the inviolability of human life. 

Human ethics, then, has a biological origin, one which has been instrumental in our cultural evolution.  Biomorphising ethics – bringing human morality in line with that exhibited by the other species – is therefore not a solution, for this would demand a deconstruction of age-old systems of laws and rights, upon which all civilisation has been constructed. 

We have now rebuilt some parameters for our understanding of ethics.  Ethical judgements cannot reasonably be applied to any species others than our own, as this is to betray the origins and function of morality.  [The urge to do so can be seen as an evolutionary by-product, or spandrel, of our ancestral inclination towards pro-social behaviour for the benefit of the group, just as our fondness for baby animals is triggered by the ‘hard-wired’ obligation to protect our own infants.]  Neither can ethical codes be totally jettisoned, as this would be to commit societal suicide.  Instead, we must acknowledge the limitations of our value systems and seek to apply and refine these only within our species.

This brings us to the problem of empathy.  It is all very well to state that our morality is merely a device for ensuring our clan’s survival, but what of the myriad permutations and nuances that now, after thousands of years of cultural development, constitute a society’s ethical code?  Surely, in seeking to iron out every inequality, human morality has truly attained a righteous position?  This is a question best left to the ethicists.  The notions of right and wrong, though by no means universal, are so much a part of most cultures that to question them is to risk accusations of sociopathy.  Despite this, most people in the western world are confronted by moral ambiguities on a daily basis.  Many of these stem from apparent contradictions to the idea, mentioned previously, that all human life is holy.  We are, for example, less concerned by the loss of human life in far off places than on our own doorstep (which, incidentally, fits well with the Darwinian perspective).  Whether it is desirable to attempt to ‘rectify’ these contradictions, that is, whether we should strive to expand upon our evolved capacity for altruism and empathy, is again dependent on this notion of human life as sacrosanct.  This is a problem which has only originated within the last two or three thousand years, perhaps since the development of city states, and which has only really gained currency since the dawning of global mass media.  It can be summarised as follows:

• Humans living in small groups develop a tendency towards pro-social/moral behaviour in the interests of the group.

• Moral behaviour is codified through religions, still in the interests of group-living.

• Moral behaviour is further codified and intellectualised in philosophy.

• Religious and philosophical notions of right and wrong become increasingly rigid, and are used, in conjunction with Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment thought etc., as evidence of humanity’s uniqueness.

• Humanism challenges Judeo-Christian orthodox but continues to assert humanity’s uniqueness, leading to the idea of the ‘sanctity’ of human life.

• The ‘sanctity’ of human life becomes the dominant ideology of the modern era.

• Global communication stretches the boundaries of one’s ‘moral community’ to include one’s whole country and, finally, the entire planet.

• Disproportionate concern over the plight of others in one’s global moral community hints at limitations of human empathy.

Most people feel a moral obligation towards their family and local community.  Others extend this feeling to their country (patriotism).  In recent years many people have been encouraged to include all humanity in their moral community, a scheme facilitated by global mass media, which can trigger feelings of empathy – originally reserved for our close kin – from a great distance.  In the days prior to widespread media coverage of wars and famines, such events were morally unproblematic.  Now, however, television images engage our empathetic brains, giving rise to apparent moral ambiguities.  In a similar vein, the separation, objectification and commoditisation of domestic animals (and the extinction of some wild ones) is causing increased confusion for that part of our reason that serves to protect our close kin.  Vegetarianism and wildlife protection agencies are just two phenomena triggered by this ancestral predisposition to kin protectionism.

What can be done about these alleged moral ambiguities?  Should we confine altruistic acts to our closest kin, as ‘dictated’ by our evolutionary history, or should we confront our ‘hypocrisies’ and strive to extend protection to all humanity (as suggested by our ‘evolutionary present’)?  These questions prompt further, larger ones.  Again, the idea of human life as sacred demands we seek to look out for all our species.  But once the myth of sanctity is neutralised, where does that leave us?  To whom, if anyone, do we have moral obligations?  In this modern atomised society the idea of a moral community of close kin has lost all meaning; is this therefore also true of the concepts of good and bad, right and wrong?

The answer to such questions, if any indeed exists, lies within the domain of meta-ethics.  Meta-ethical schools of thought are commonly divided into realist and anti-realist.  Theorists of the former hold that moral values are objective, intrinsic properties of the world that are simply discovered or intuited.  Anti-realists, to the contrary, assert that moral values are contingent on the history and belief systems of individuals and cultures, and that differing moral codes are as numerous as there are people on earth.  It is here not my intention to provide tentative responses to the above anomalies.  Rather, I wish to explore the nature of this dilemma in the hope of shedding light on some causal mechanisms. 

It should be apparent that the paradox discussed here is above all else a secular problem: unlike moral codes enmeshed in religion, secular ethics afford no consensus and no ultimate salvation.  Morality, extrapolated over centuries by human reason, is now crumbling under the weight of global relativism (akin to what Henri Bergson termed the ‘dissolving power’ of human intelligence).  The real issue here is not so much ‘what is good:bad/right:wrong?’ as ‘how can we agree on a notion of good:bad/right:wrong?’  It is this writer’s opinion that the lack of consensus on moral issues in western secular society derives from the decontextualisation of many fields of knowledge, such as scientific and economic thought.  By disembedding such knowledge, reducing it to that which can be tested empirically, modelled and predicted, we have inadvertently narrowed our realm of understanding and meaning.  Economics, for instance, gives objects, experience and beings a specious commensurability:

The application of a common monetary metric to dissimilar things reduces their qualitative distinctiveness to the status of mere qualitative difference.  The most appropriate answer to questions of the type “What is the difference between a forest and a parking lot?” becomes so many dollars per acre (Rappaport, R. 1979.  Ecology, Meaning and Religion. Richmond, C. A.: North Atlantic Books. pp. 130).

Of great importance to the sustainability of human societies is ‘higher-order meaning’[1] - not of distinctions but of similarities underlying distinctions, as in metaphor, symbol, aesthetics and so on.  It has been argued by Gregory Bateson among others that such levels of meaning compensate for the inability of the linear, problem-solving nature of human consciousness to comprehend the circular connectedness of living systems.  In other words, aesthetics, ritual and so on can make people aware of the holisticity of existence by alluding to underlying unity.  A common understanding of this could do much to dampen the pathological insecurity of modern moralists.

What does this mean for the future of ethics?  Given the failure of conscious reason alone to construct solid moral foundations for secular society (as described above), it seems much could be gained from re-embedding ethical knowledge.  Through a more holistic conception of the nature of living systems - their circularity and interconnectedness – we would likely be better qualified to answer questions relating to the way in which individuals should act in the world.  This is a less a matter of building water-tight moral systems as it is of gaining some perspective on, and reverence for, the systems of which we are a part.  It should be of little surprise that all cultures and creeds who have managed their societies and environments sustainably have exhibited a heightened awareness of their part in a great network of life, coupled with respect for each node and interconnection.  The future course of ethics, if it is to be anything other than deleterious, depends on realigning it with the spiritual and, in so doing, restoring meaning to the natural world.

[1] This term was coined by the anthropologist Roy Rappaport (1979) in his book Ecology, Meaning and Religion. Richmond, C. A.: North Atlantic Books.

The Ethics of Domestication

It is evident that Western perceptions of and attitudes toward animals (and ‘nature’ in general) have their roots firmly imbedded in the Judaeo-Christian philosophical tradition (Serpell 1986:122). According to this tradition, the Earth and the animal and plant species which inhabit it were created specifically to serve the interests of humanity (Thomas 1983:17). In the biblical accounts of creation, for example, God creates humans ‘in His own image’, and awards Man ‘dominion over every living thing that moveth upon the earth’ (Genesis 1:24-28). Here it is not my intension merely to highlight further examples of such out-dated narratives. Rather, I wish to demonstrate that Western attitudes toward animals, from at least the time of Greek writing, are part of a wider-scale anthropocentricism inherent in Western theological and philosophical discourse.

The myth of human supremacy has two major cornerstones: the rationalist philosophies of ancient Greece (Singer 1995:188) and the fundamentalist dogmas of Medieval and Renaissance Europe. In the case of the former, chiefly the works of Plato and Aristotle, intellect and the power of reason were exalted above all other human faculties. By the seventeenth century anthropocentric thought had become far more than a mere arbitrary ideal; ‘it was a fundamental and fiercely dogmatic moral precept whose exponents vigorously and…violently opposed alternative doctrines’ (Serpell 1986:124-25). With the establishment of the Inquisition, those who doubted the Aristotelian notions of a human-animal divide or a geocentric Universe could be harshly persecuted. Copernicus (1473-1543) and Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) revived the theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Bruno even speculated that the Universe was in fact infinite, and concluded that our solar system was neither at the centre of the Cosmos nor unique: ‘man is no more than an ant in the present of the infinite’ (Singer 1995:199). Having refused to recant these heresies, Bruno was burnt at the stake (Lovell 1979:3). A similar fate awaited anyone who ‘threatened to undermine the distinction between human and animal, culture and nature’ (Serpell 1986:125). Harmless cults involving nature worship, and superstitious rituals related to ‘pagan divinities of grove, stream and mountain’ were ruthlessly suppressed (Thomas 1983:22).

The martyrdom of Giordano Bruno and the persecution of Galileo in the early seventeenth century marked a (minor) turning point in the tide of humanism that afflicted European thought for the previous five centuries. Along with the astronomers Kepler, Hooke, and Newton (Lovell 1979:4), the moral philosopher Jeremy Bentham played a significant part in this transition. With regards to the question of duties toward animals, Bentham did not dispute the fact that, in many respects, humans were superior to animals. This fact was, however, irrelevant. For Bentham, ‘the question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?' (Singer 1995:7). Serpell (1986:129) notes that ironically, the Cartesian vivisectors of the previous century had sown the seeds of their own destruction. The evidence amassed on animals’ internal anatomy and physiology, particularly the underlying mechanisms and responses, seemed to suggest that animals and humans experienced similar sensations of pain and discomfort. Cruelty to animals was, therefore, comparable to cruelty towards an irrational and speechless human infant.

The humanist heritage is a pervasive one. Despite several centuries of near-constant challenges to Christian dogma, many of which (Copernicus 1543; Darwin 1859) are now taken as ‘gospel’ fact, the ‘overwhelming majority of humans…are speciesists’ (Singer 1995:9). True, public vivisections are now a rare sight in town squares, and products tested on animals are becoming increasingly unpopular. Yet our treatment of domesticated animals does little to reflect this trend. The detached commoditisation synonymous with intensive farming, or agribusiness, has ushered in a new era of abuse, and spawned a paradoxical out-of-sight-out-of-mind attitude:

…most pigs now spend their entire lives indoors. They are born and suckled in a farrowing unit, raised initially in a nursery, and brought to slaughter weight in a growing-feeding unit…They are sent to market at between five and six months of age weighing about 220 pounds (Singer 1995:123)

Broiler chickens are killed when they are seven weeks old (the natural lifespan of a chicken is about seven years old. [They] may have as little as half a square foot of space per chicken…Under these conditions, when there is normal lighting, the stress of crowding and absence of natural outlets for the birds’ energies lead to outbreaks of fighting, with birds pecking at each other’s feathers and sometimes killing and eating one another. Very dim lighting has been found to reduce such behaviour and so the birds are likely to live out their last weeks in near darkness (Singer 1995:99).

This prompts the enquiry: do humans have an ethical obligation towards domesticates? On a deeper level, it raises the question whether there is something wrong with the condition of domestication itself (Palmer 1995:13). In the following section, these issues will be addressed in the light of current and past consensus on the origins and nature of domestication.

Domestication as Contractualism

Any investigation into the ethics of domestication requires consideration of both the process of domestication and its beneficiaries. Animal domestication is essentially an evolutionary phenomenon involving a symbiotic relationship between two species (Bökönyi 1989:24). It is widely acknowledged that the species which were amenable to domestication all shared similar characteristics, such as sociability, hardiness, free-breeding, and the ability to communicate (Clutton-Brock 1987:15-16). Budiansky (1992:15) and others have maintained that the earliest domesticates were scavengers who chose for their own benefit to live close to human settlements. Thus domestication is conceptualised as a process of co-evolution between two species, one of which gradually ‘exchanges’ wild attributes (fear, aggression, etc.) for the food and protection afforded by the other. Similarities in communication structures and dominance/submission hierarchies between human beings and other species thenceforth permitted the former to assume a role equivalent to pack- or herd-leader, thus facilitating domestication. Budianksy (1992) has argued that such associations are mutually beneficial: by cooperating with the dominant species on Earth, domesticates have ensured a steadily-increasing population while their wild counterparts slowly veer towards extinction. In this respect, domestic animals are an evolutionary success story. For this reason, some authorities speak of domestication as a bargain or contract between humans and certain other animals. As J. B. Callicott once put it, there is a kind of ‘evolved and unspoken contract between man and beast’.

If one takes as fact the notion that animals voluntarily chose to associate with humans prior to domestication, one might feel justified in applying contractualism to the relationship between humans and domestic animals. Contractualist theories are those that justify moral principles by appealing to a social contract that is voluntarily committed to under ideal conditions for such commitment. According to Rawls (1972:11), however, contract theory is dependant on such contracts being recognised as just by ‘free and rational persons’. Animals are, of course, not in such a position, and hence contract theory has generally been seen as fruitless in examining the moral considerability of animals (Palmer 1995:16). It is entirely possible that animals learnt to coexist with humans for their own benefit, and that this was encouraged by humans for their benefit. However, this does not constitute a contract, as animals generally act in ways that are immediately beneficial to their own well being, and thus would have remained largely unaware of any long-term implications of such associations. Furthermore, had animals fully understood the content of such a ‘bargain’, it is at best questionable whether they would have accepted it, given the ‘unequal power and irreversible change in animal nature resulting from such a contract’ (Palmer 1995:20). The terms of this quasi-contract were dictated exclusively by humans, for human benefit. In most cases this involves a period of protection and provision of food, followed by slaughter. Such a contract also grants humans agency over breeding patterns, permitting them to select characteristics which best suited human convenience (Palmer 1995:17). This, then, situates the fate of both the individual animal and the species in general firmly in human hands.

What advantages, if any, do domesticated animals accrue from an association with humans? Budiansky (1992:143) notes that ‘the struggle between species is a grim reality of the world, and the evolutionary advantages that led to the “domestic alliance”…underscore some genuine improvements in the lives of species that cast their lot with man’s’. Freedom from predators, starvation, and parasites, are, he proposes, reason enough to believe that the terms of the aforementioned contract are equally satisfied. Would this be an acceptable bargain? The animal rights philosopher Peter Singer (1995) has claimed that the reasoning employed by defenders of animal agriculture is comparable to that adopted by advocates of slavery, who claimed improvement in the lot of ‘inferior’ Africans brought to America. Regardless of the quality of living conditions on a farm, by keeping animals at all we are depriving them of a basic right to freedom. Even the steady food supply on a farm is an unmitigated blessing, since ‘it deprives the animal of its most basic natural activity, the search for food….the result is a life of utter boredom…surely the life of freedom is to be preferred’ (Singer 1995). But if domestication is to be viewed as an evolutionary phenomenon, as has been argued throughout this dissertation, then we must grant that the evolutionary changes that led to domestication occurred precisely because ‘freedom’ was not to be ‘preferred’ (Budiansky 1992:144). Moreover, if an animal no longer has the biological urge or ability to search for food, as is the case for most domesticates, one cannot argue that the animal is being deprived of its basic natural behaviour. With regards to Singer’s suggestion that life for the domesticate is one of ‘utter boredom’, one must concede that this factor is unquantifiable. Nevertheless, the systematic neotony that has occurred in all domesticated animals has rendered them genetically much more dependent than the wild cousins; their dependence is not merely a consequence of their confinement in barns and fields, it is a result of their evolutionary history (Budiansky 1992:148).

The Ethics of Dependence

The notion of dependence, then, represents a fundamental moral aspect of the process of domestication. Palmer (1995:12) notes three different ways in which animals may become dependant on human beings: by apparently voluntary association, by being kept in captivity, and by being bred into dependence. Domestic animals fit into this last category. They have either been bred for dependence or for other characteristics which have, as side-effects, increased their dependence. Budiansky (1992:122) gives the example of problem births among sheep. In many farm flocks the proportion of problem births is growing steadily, since the ‘problem’ lambs are usually the ones farmers want to save for breeding: ‘the very traits that make them troublesome – the propensity to conceive twins or triplets, or to grow large lambs – are both heritable and economically desirable’ (Budiansky 1992:122). As a result, within a few generations the majority of ewes will become dependent on humans for assistance during lambing. For almost all domestic animals, the possibility of independent survival has been lost, not just for the individual, but for the whole lineage. Through dependency, the reduction of ‘natural’ selective pressures, and excess ‘kindness’ from humans, domesticates have become increasingly handicapped. They are, in this respect, degenerates (Budiansky 1992:123). This does not mean, however, that they are less worthy of our consideration. In fact, their degeneracy, which we had a hand in (albeit indirectly), dictates a greater responsibility on our part.

How, then, can one assume a more viable moral stance in our relationships with domesticated animals? Regarding the question of whether an animal gets a better deal out of living and being slaughtered, rather than never being bred at all, Nozick (1974:287) argues that a similar scenario for humans would ‘not look very convincing’. If humans bred other humans for consumption using this same justification, we would not be satisfied, as ‘an existing person has claims, even against those whose purpose in creating him was to violate those claims’ (Nozick 1974:287). Similarly, where the alternative to domestication is a life in the wild, we find the process to be morally problematic. Palmer (1995:18) comments that if aliens bred humans for food in captivity, reasoning that we were generally better off in captivity than chancing in the wild, we would likely find this an unsuitable ‘bargain’. One might argue that humans have different psychological needs, and that they would suffer differently from confinement and the knowledge that they were to be eaten. But, as Palmer (1995:19) hypothesises, such qualities could be ‘bred-out’ of humans. Would this make the proposed bargain any more acceptable, given the alternative life as a hunter-gatherer would involve the ever-present threat of attack and disease?

No Turning Back: The Future of Domesticatory Relations

Regarding the dependency of domesticated animals, Coppinger & Smith (1983) have suggested that evolution and time are in fact now on the side of the ‘degenerates’. Dependence not only means there is no turning back; dependence has actually become such a powerful evolutionary force unto itself that is leading inevitably to a new evolutionary age: an ‘Age of Interdependent Forms’ (Coppinger & Smith 1983:284). In this new age, the dominance of domestic symbioses in the global ecosystem will spell mass extinction for the more specialized and independent species on a level comparable to that which removed the dinosaurs. As Coppinger & Smith (1983) point out, ‘current biological concepts of what is fit and adaptive are at least 15,000 years out of date’. Those species traditionally cast as nature’s fittest (the lion, for example) will likely be out-competed by those with more cooperative, interdependent tendencies (the house cat). The age of dinosaurs may seem no more foreign to future generations than the world of ‘self-sufficient, highly specialised “dinosaurs” of our day’ (Coppinger & Smith 1983).

The crux of this argument, as a glance at the recent population growth figures of humans and domesticates readily substantiates, is that species outside the dependent alliance are simply incapable of reproducing as rapidly. In 1860, humans and domesticated species accounted for 5 percent of terrestrial biomass – the net total weight of plant and animal life on Earth. Today the figure is roughly 20 percent; Coppinger & Smith (1983) suggest that by 2020 it will be 40 percent, and, if the world population reaches twelve billion, the point at which it is expected to level off, the figure will be around 60 percent. But as Coppinger & Smith (1983) are quick to point out, this is not necessarily the environmental disaster that is so regularly ‘depicted by those who point with alarm to the extinction of species and the appropriation of ever more of the earth’s resources by humans’ (Budiansky 1992:125). From an evolutionary standpoint, change is not good or bad; it is simply inevitable.

Bibliography

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