I thought I'd knock off another post while I had a few spare moments. I recently uploaded the transcript of a talk of mine where I discuss abolitionist veganism from a virtue-ethical perspective (I am a proponent of both). While doing research for my talk I came across another philosopher-blogger, Pamela Stubbart, who also takes a virtue-ethical approach to our relationships with animals (and who runs a pretty good ethics blog). I'm planning a long future blog post about her views (she is an ex-vegan, a term I'm ambivalent about), but one of her claims is that eating meat is permissible on a virtue ethic, and that "a genuine sensitivity towards the suffering of non-human animals is
compatible with eating in ways that do not harm me, mentally or
physically." A premise in her argument is that veganism can be bad for a person, nutritionally and psychically--again, I'll tackle this in a future blog post--but for now I'll stick with what appears to be the main idea of this remark, which is that the virtuous person can eat meat, so long as she cares about the animal's suffering and is conscientious about how the animals she eats were treated. Animal rights don't matter to a virtuous person (mainly because animals don't have them, according to Stubbart).
To be fair, Stubbart's remarks are about four years old, so I don't know if her views have changed or not, but I'll address them hypothetically. Rereading my post, I notice that a few of my remarks in response to Stubbart come across as harsh and judgmental, but since I feel very strongly about the virtue-ethical case for veganism, I think I have to respond rather directly to Stubbart on some points, which requires me to address some of the autobiographical parts of her discussion (for that discussion, see here, here, here, here, and here). Here are my thoughts:
I find something amiss about the proposal that genuine concern for animal suffering is compatible with their use as natural resources, namely, as tasty food here for us to enjoy. Perhaps it can manifest itself in a context where eating animals is an utter necessity. But that context is probably not your context, or mine: veganism can be more than nutritionally adequate (well, Stubbart doesn't think this, but I'll bracket that for now). Extenuating circumstances aside, there's something that just sounds awkard to me about the claim that we can eat animals and still have genuine concern for their well-being, suffering in particular. This is because, on my view, we can't properly care about suffering without caring about the sufferer herself. Suffering is worth caring about because the individual who is suffering is worth caring about--she has a distinctive value, one that is nonidentical to the value of her mental states, and it's this kind of value that (a) gives us reason to care about her and (b) makes her suffering bad. But, as I shall eventually explain, it's that same kind of value that (c) requires us to treat her with respect and justice, and not as a mere means to our ends. The latter claim sounds very Kantian in spirit, but I don't think one needs to be a Kantian to think it is wrong to treat other individuals as mere means: a virtue ethicist can condemn it, too.
For those familiar with the literature in animal ethics, some of what I've just said might resemble Tom Regan's thoughts on the inherent value of subjects of a life, a value that is not reducible to the value of their pleasurable mental experiences. Regan uses this proposal as the basis for the conclusion that individuals, including nonhuman animals, have rights. On my view, one can get a similar point across without speaking of rights per se, and unlike Regan, I don't think that the distinctive value of an individual is inherent, strictly speaking, if "inherent" denotes some sort of nonrelational metaphysical property (I won't go into that here, but I talk about it in my previous post). But similar to Regan, I do take individuals, including nonhuman animals, to possess a certain kind of value that requires us to care about them in certain ways. And I think that it's precisely this value that makes any claim about the badness of suffering intelligible.
Let's return to Stubbart's views. Stubbart, from what her remarks seem to suggest, thinks that a good person will be sensitive to animal suffering. There's an implicit but very obvious premise here, which is that suffering is bad. But how is it bad? Well, Stubbart doesn't really go into that (it falls a bit outside the scope of her discussion, which is more autobiographical than theoretical), but I will, because I think it will be instructive. One possible answer is that suffering is just bad, period--to borrow a locution from utilitarian Henry Sidgwick, we might say that it's bad "from the point of view of the universe," so to speak. Basically, the more suffering there is in the universe, the worse it is. The more pleasure and happiness there is in the universe, the better it is. Why does pleasure/suffering make the universe good/bad? Well, it just does, because pleasure has intrinsic goodness: its goodness does not depend on any sort of relation or context, and it doesn't matter whose it is or what brings it about (the pleasure of a serial killer or heroine-addict, strictly speaking, is intrinsically valuable--but our duty to promote it is counteracted by the fact that these things tend to cause more suffering than pleasure in the long run). The reverse goes for suffering, which has intrinsic badness: its badness is a metaphysical property that belongs entirely to the suffering, with no reference to context in which that suffering takes place. The discomfort I get from strenuous rock climbing is intrinsically bad, even if it leads to more pleasure in the long run.
But why is suffering bad? At this point, a utilitarian will probably tell me to buzz off. Or perhaps she'll say that suffering is identical to badness--they are one and the same thing. Neither response is particularly satisfying. The first answer is unsatisfying because it's not an answer; the second answer is unsatisfying for reasons that were astutely pointed out by G. E. Moore a hundred years ago (I don't share Moore's conclusions about the nature of value, but I think he's right in saying that badness/goodness are not identical to suffering/pleasure).
But there's a further reason I think that the proposal is unsatisfying, which is that intuitively, not all suffering (or pain, or discomfort) is bad. Take my rock climbing example from earlier. I may very enthusiastically pursue rock climbing, knowing full well that it will require great strain and exertion, that I'll have to fight through increasing soreness and exhaustion as I get further and further towards the end of a route. If I could spare myself the exertion, the strain, would I still climb rocks? Probably not. It's not because I know that the strain and discomfort will eventually result in my being in better shape and not having to endure discomfort in the future--when that happens, I'll just move on to harder, more challenging routes. The reason I'm willing to put up with the agony of rock climbing is precisely because I value it: it's part of what makes rock climbing a worthwhile activity for me. The suffering I endure while climbing rocks is good suffering, good because it is part of something that I value for its own sake. Metaphysically, it is not good intrinsically, but good for me in a way that is noninstrumental: it serves as a component in a rich, fulfilling life for me.
Notice here that I've replaced the vocabulary of being good intrinsically with the vocabulary of being good for. Whereas being good intrinsically doesn't depend on any sort of relation, being good-for is a relation. The activity of rock climbing isn't good "from the point of the universe," but because of the role it plays in one's life: it is good for someone--for me.
A problem arises. It is an oft-rehearsed point that for something to be good for anything, it must culminate in something else that is valuable. Call this the regress problem. Aristotle makes such a point at the very beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics: nothing can be good for anything unless it leads, directly or indirectly, to some final or governing kind of goodness (for Aristotle, something "at which all things aim"). Without this supposed final good, nothing can be of any worth: the goodness of any object, activity, or pursuit is sustained by the value of whatever it is good for. For rock-climbing to be good for me, we therefore need the following stipulation: that I am valuable. Without this proposal, the claim that rock climbing, or anything, is good for me is unsustainable: it doesn't make sense. You're free to disagree with this in the comments, but I think it would be difficult--certainly it wouldn't reflect our first-person conception of ourselves: on reflection, I think a lot of the things we pursue and choices we make can be explained by the fact that we take ourselves to matter. If we were fundamentally valueless creatures, nothing could intelligibly be said to be good for us. Rather, things like rock-climbing (or pleasure, or health, or friendship) would have to be just good, period, which, to me, at least, doesn't explain why they're good.
So what about suffering? I gave an example of suffering that is good, but we can reasonably agree that not all suffering is like this. The suffering brought about by financial trouble, poor health, or wanton cruelty is a very bad thing. But again, if we're going to reject the claim that suffering is just bad, period, then we need an alternative explanation, which is that suffering, when bad, is bad because it is bad for the individual whose suffering it is. Again, the regress problem requires us to explain the badness of suffering with reference to some further value. And on my view, this value is precisely the value of the individual whose suffering it is: the value of an individual is what grounds, and renders intelligible, the badness of her suffering.
This claim strikes me as plausible, and despite the metaphysical nitty-gritty that I've been digging into, gets at something that I think is very central to our everyday moral phenomenology. If I see that you are in pain, I am motivated to want to help you because I regard you as worth helping. It's not that I want to make the universe a better place by reducing the amount of suffering it contains, as a classical utilitarian might have it. It's that I can see that your suffering is a bad thing for you, and my urge to help manifests itself because I value you in a distinctive sort of way. Caring about your suffering is derivative: ultimately, it's my concern for you that makes me want to help.
I emerge from this portion of the discussion, then, with two claims:
(i) Metaphysically, suffering is bad only if the individual who suffers is valuable (this is a necessary but not a sufficient condition).
(ii) Ethically, the appropriate way to care about suffering is to care for the individual whose suffering it is (to regard her as worthwhile).
Here are some further claims:
(iii) We do not appropriately care about suffering if we do not regard the sufferer as worthwhile.
(iv) We do not regard the sufferer as worthwhile if we value her as a commodity or tool.
(v) We do not appropriately care about animal suffering if, in non-extenuating circumstances, we regard animals as commodities or tools (an implicit claim here is that animal suffering is bad).
Indeed, from a pragmatic standpoint, I wonder if we really care at all. So long as we value animals because we like the way they taste, my suspicion is that to care about their suffering is merely to care about it insofar as it makes it easier for us to eat them, and we'll probably have few qualms about buying factory-farmed meat or other cruel products when it's easy for us to do so.
The crux of my argument? This way of caring about suffering, contra Stubbart, is not an instance of "genuine sensitivity towards suffering." We are well within our rights to question the character of someone who cares about suffering in this way--to question whether her sensitivity really is genuine sensitivity, and not just a rationalization. Stubbart herself writes a bit about cognitive dissonance on her blog, and about how ethical attitudes might change to explain prior habits: as she explains, she found herself accidentally turning into a vegetarian during graduate school, decided to supplement her newfound diet with moral reasons, and subsequently turned vegan. I wonder if something like the inverse is what happened when, after nine months, she decided veganism wasn't right for her. I can only speculate, though.
Finally, to return to the kernel of my argument:
(vii) When we appropriately care about suffering, we exemplify a virtue, compassion.
(viii) To be compassionate is to regard another individual's suffering as worth caring about because she is worth caring about, viz, by being distinctively valuable.
(ix) Therefore, a compassionate individual will discharge a host of other virtues that require us to treat other individuals as valuable, such as justice and respectfulness. Above all, she will see other individuals in a certain light--as someone who is not to be exploited or subordinated for the benefit of others. She will see them this way, for instance, when she recognizes that they are suffering. Her concern for their suffering may be framed by her broader concern for the fact that they are being treated unjustly and disrespectfully, as tools or commodities.
(x) In our circumstances, being virtuous in our relations with animals recommends itself to veganism.
(xi) The right thing to do is what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances.
(xii) Veganism is the right thing to do.
So, there you have it, yet again. My rough-and-ready virtue-ethical case for veganism. I say "rough-and-ready" because a lot of details, clarifications, premises, and definitions are obviously missing--one could write a book about this (Hmm!). It starts with one of the premises of welfarism--that compassion for animals is compatible with their exploitation--tries to show why this is not so, and proceeds to look at what some of the other virtues a person who recognizes this might possess. From her blog, Stubbart is probably a very kind, decent person (many non-vegans that I know are, since I'm friends with a bunch of them): making a virtue-ethical case for veganism would be a waste of time if I thought that all non-vegans were thoroughly vicious people.
To be fair, Stubbart's remarks are about four years old, so I don't know if her views have changed or not, but I'll address them hypothetically. Rereading my post, I notice that a few of my remarks in response to Stubbart come across as harsh and judgmental, but since I feel very strongly about the virtue-ethical case for veganism, I think I have to respond rather directly to Stubbart on some points, which requires me to address some of the autobiographical parts of her discussion (for that discussion, see here, here, here, here, and here). Here are my thoughts:
I find something amiss about the proposal that genuine concern for animal suffering is compatible with their use as natural resources, namely, as tasty food here for us to enjoy. Perhaps it can manifest itself in a context where eating animals is an utter necessity. But that context is probably not your context, or mine: veganism can be more than nutritionally adequate (well, Stubbart doesn't think this, but I'll bracket that for now). Extenuating circumstances aside, there's something that just sounds awkard to me about the claim that we can eat animals and still have genuine concern for their well-being, suffering in particular. This is because, on my view, we can't properly care about suffering without caring about the sufferer herself. Suffering is worth caring about because the individual who is suffering is worth caring about--she has a distinctive value, one that is nonidentical to the value of her mental states, and it's this kind of value that (a) gives us reason to care about her and (b) makes her suffering bad. But, as I shall eventually explain, it's that same kind of value that (c) requires us to treat her with respect and justice, and not as a mere means to our ends. The latter claim sounds very Kantian in spirit, but I don't think one needs to be a Kantian to think it is wrong to treat other individuals as mere means: a virtue ethicist can condemn it, too.
For those familiar with the literature in animal ethics, some of what I've just said might resemble Tom Regan's thoughts on the inherent value of subjects of a life, a value that is not reducible to the value of their pleasurable mental experiences. Regan uses this proposal as the basis for the conclusion that individuals, including nonhuman animals, have rights. On my view, one can get a similar point across without speaking of rights per se, and unlike Regan, I don't think that the distinctive value of an individual is inherent, strictly speaking, if "inherent" denotes some sort of nonrelational metaphysical property (I won't go into that here, but I talk about it in my previous post). But similar to Regan, I do take individuals, including nonhuman animals, to possess a certain kind of value that requires us to care about them in certain ways. And I think that it's precisely this value that makes any claim about the badness of suffering intelligible.
Let's return to Stubbart's views. Stubbart, from what her remarks seem to suggest, thinks that a good person will be sensitive to animal suffering. There's an implicit but very obvious premise here, which is that suffering is bad. But how is it bad? Well, Stubbart doesn't really go into that (it falls a bit outside the scope of her discussion, which is more autobiographical than theoretical), but I will, because I think it will be instructive. One possible answer is that suffering is just bad, period--to borrow a locution from utilitarian Henry Sidgwick, we might say that it's bad "from the point of view of the universe," so to speak. Basically, the more suffering there is in the universe, the worse it is. The more pleasure and happiness there is in the universe, the better it is. Why does pleasure/suffering make the universe good/bad? Well, it just does, because pleasure has intrinsic goodness: its goodness does not depend on any sort of relation or context, and it doesn't matter whose it is or what brings it about (the pleasure of a serial killer or heroine-addict, strictly speaking, is intrinsically valuable--but our duty to promote it is counteracted by the fact that these things tend to cause more suffering than pleasure in the long run). The reverse goes for suffering, which has intrinsic badness: its badness is a metaphysical property that belongs entirely to the suffering, with no reference to context in which that suffering takes place. The discomfort I get from strenuous rock climbing is intrinsically bad, even if it leads to more pleasure in the long run.
But why is suffering bad? At this point, a utilitarian will probably tell me to buzz off. Or perhaps she'll say that suffering is identical to badness--they are one and the same thing. Neither response is particularly satisfying. The first answer is unsatisfying because it's not an answer; the second answer is unsatisfying for reasons that were astutely pointed out by G. E. Moore a hundred years ago (I don't share Moore's conclusions about the nature of value, but I think he's right in saying that badness/goodness are not identical to suffering/pleasure).
But there's a further reason I think that the proposal is unsatisfying, which is that intuitively, not all suffering (or pain, or discomfort) is bad. Take my rock climbing example from earlier. I may very enthusiastically pursue rock climbing, knowing full well that it will require great strain and exertion, that I'll have to fight through increasing soreness and exhaustion as I get further and further towards the end of a route. If I could spare myself the exertion, the strain, would I still climb rocks? Probably not. It's not because I know that the strain and discomfort will eventually result in my being in better shape and not having to endure discomfort in the future--when that happens, I'll just move on to harder, more challenging routes. The reason I'm willing to put up with the agony of rock climbing is precisely because I value it: it's part of what makes rock climbing a worthwhile activity for me. The suffering I endure while climbing rocks is good suffering, good because it is part of something that I value for its own sake. Metaphysically, it is not good intrinsically, but good for me in a way that is noninstrumental: it serves as a component in a rich, fulfilling life for me.
Notice here that I've replaced the vocabulary of being good intrinsically with the vocabulary of being good for. Whereas being good intrinsically doesn't depend on any sort of relation, being good-for is a relation. The activity of rock climbing isn't good "from the point of the universe," but because of the role it plays in one's life: it is good for someone--for me.
A problem arises. It is an oft-rehearsed point that for something to be good for anything, it must culminate in something else that is valuable. Call this the regress problem. Aristotle makes such a point at the very beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics: nothing can be good for anything unless it leads, directly or indirectly, to some final or governing kind of goodness (for Aristotle, something "at which all things aim"). Without this supposed final good, nothing can be of any worth: the goodness of any object, activity, or pursuit is sustained by the value of whatever it is good for. For rock-climbing to be good for me, we therefore need the following stipulation: that I am valuable. Without this proposal, the claim that rock climbing, or anything, is good for me is unsustainable: it doesn't make sense. You're free to disagree with this in the comments, but I think it would be difficult--certainly it wouldn't reflect our first-person conception of ourselves: on reflection, I think a lot of the things we pursue and choices we make can be explained by the fact that we take ourselves to matter. If we were fundamentally valueless creatures, nothing could intelligibly be said to be good for us. Rather, things like rock-climbing (or pleasure, or health, or friendship) would have to be just good, period, which, to me, at least, doesn't explain why they're good.
So what about suffering? I gave an example of suffering that is good, but we can reasonably agree that not all suffering is like this. The suffering brought about by financial trouble, poor health, or wanton cruelty is a very bad thing. But again, if we're going to reject the claim that suffering is just bad, period, then we need an alternative explanation, which is that suffering, when bad, is bad because it is bad for the individual whose suffering it is. Again, the regress problem requires us to explain the badness of suffering with reference to some further value. And on my view, this value is precisely the value of the individual whose suffering it is: the value of an individual is what grounds, and renders intelligible, the badness of her suffering.
This claim strikes me as plausible, and despite the metaphysical nitty-gritty that I've been digging into, gets at something that I think is very central to our everyday moral phenomenology. If I see that you are in pain, I am motivated to want to help you because I regard you as worth helping. It's not that I want to make the universe a better place by reducing the amount of suffering it contains, as a classical utilitarian might have it. It's that I can see that your suffering is a bad thing for you, and my urge to help manifests itself because I value you in a distinctive sort of way. Caring about your suffering is derivative: ultimately, it's my concern for you that makes me want to help.
I emerge from this portion of the discussion, then, with two claims:
(i) Metaphysically, suffering is bad only if the individual who suffers is valuable (this is a necessary but not a sufficient condition).
(ii) Ethically, the appropriate way to care about suffering is to care for the individual whose suffering it is (to regard her as worthwhile).
Here are some further claims:
(iii) We do not appropriately care about suffering if we do not regard the sufferer as worthwhile.
(iv) We do not regard the sufferer as worthwhile if we value her as a commodity or tool.
(v) We do not appropriately care about animal suffering if, in non-extenuating circumstances, we regard animals as commodities or tools (an implicit claim here is that animal suffering is bad).
Indeed, from a pragmatic standpoint, I wonder if we really care at all. So long as we value animals because we like the way they taste, my suspicion is that to care about their suffering is merely to care about it insofar as it makes it easier for us to eat them, and we'll probably have few qualms about buying factory-farmed meat or other cruel products when it's easy for us to do so.
The crux of my argument? This way of caring about suffering, contra Stubbart, is not an instance of "genuine sensitivity towards suffering." We are well within our rights to question the character of someone who cares about suffering in this way--to question whether her sensitivity really is genuine sensitivity, and not just a rationalization. Stubbart herself writes a bit about cognitive dissonance on her blog, and about how ethical attitudes might change to explain prior habits: as she explains, she found herself accidentally turning into a vegetarian during graduate school, decided to supplement her newfound diet with moral reasons, and subsequently turned vegan. I wonder if something like the inverse is what happened when, after nine months, she decided veganism wasn't right for her. I can only speculate, though.
Finally, to return to the kernel of my argument:
(vii) When we appropriately care about suffering, we exemplify a virtue, compassion.
(viii) To be compassionate is to regard another individual's suffering as worth caring about because she is worth caring about, viz, by being distinctively valuable.
(ix) Therefore, a compassionate individual will discharge a host of other virtues that require us to treat other individuals as valuable, such as justice and respectfulness. Above all, she will see other individuals in a certain light--as someone who is not to be exploited or subordinated for the benefit of others. She will see them this way, for instance, when she recognizes that they are suffering. Her concern for their suffering may be framed by her broader concern for the fact that they are being treated unjustly and disrespectfully, as tools or commodities.
(x) In our circumstances, being virtuous in our relations with animals recommends itself to veganism.
(xi) The right thing to do is what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances.
(xii) Veganism is the right thing to do.
So, there you have it, yet again. My rough-and-ready virtue-ethical case for veganism. I say "rough-and-ready" because a lot of details, clarifications, premises, and definitions are obviously missing--one could write a book about this (Hmm!). It starts with one of the premises of welfarism--that compassion for animals is compatible with their exploitation--tries to show why this is not so, and proceeds to look at what some of the other virtues a person who recognizes this might possess. From her blog, Stubbart is probably a very kind, decent person (many non-vegans that I know are, since I'm friends with a bunch of them): making a virtue-ethical case for veganism would be a waste of time if I thought that all non-vegans were thoroughly vicious people.
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