Towards A Response: “Line Drawing”
I’ve been considering a question that has honestly baffled me for some time. The question pertains to the issue of “line drawing”: Why, some have asked, is defining ’sentience’ as the insuperable line between those who count - morally - and those who do not count any less arbitrary than relying on ’species membership’ or ‘intelligence,’ for example?
The common response surrounds the issue of “interests”: Sentience is intrinsically related to interests, interests concern individual experiential welfare (i.e., I literally fare better or worse depending on what happens to me), which implies a conscious recognition of what happens - I feel. Therefore, interests ought to be considered morally relevant, regardless of the being whose interests are in question. While I agree with the ethical substance of this response, I fail to see how it responds to the challenge. Identifying ’species’ as the necessary characteristic implies that group membership is morally relevant, while arguing that the capacity to have ‘interests’ is the characteristic that ought to be considered implies that sentience is morally relevant. This begs the question: Why is the former arbitrary while the latter rests on some objective moral grounds? The ‘interests’ argument has intuitive appeal given the nearly universal recognition that pain is bad ergo our interest in not being in pain is a good to be protected. However, it seems that our response merely proffers a different theory without actually addressing the criticism.
As I think of this problem, then, I have concluded that it is indeed “arbitrary” to draw the line at sentience - as arbitrary, perhaps, as IQ or gender. Why? Because I cannot think of any other grounds to which we can appeal when defining the line as such other than emotion or more accurately, considered intuition. Emotion, by definition, is irrational: It doesn’t lend itself to logical proof.
This conclusion, however, doesn’t imply that the challenge to speciesism isn’t valid, nor does it mean that ethical veganism is found wanting. This is so for two reasons:
A) Speciesism follows the same logic as the most blatant sexism: identifying membership in biological group X as morally relevant, and relying on this difference to argue for a moral justification for discounting the interests of women - regardless of other similarities. Again, however, perhaps these similarities are as arbitrarily defined as gender but it has been decided, collectively, at least in theory, that we accept the premise that being a man does not justify an inequitable power relationship between you and all women. The inequality, then, is based on invalid (morally) differences: Women are equal to men regardless of the group distinction. We hold this premise strongly. An argument, therefore, that challenges it doesn’t demand our rational assent. Replace ’species’ with ‘gender’ and the logic just laid out follows; but we’ve rejected this kind of reasoning.
B) On this same line of reasoning, appealing to sentience is a response to another premise considered paramount throughout ethical theory: the impersonal badness of suffering. Suffering, as defined by the bearing of instant or prolonged pain or distress - more accurately, I think, anything other than pleasant comfort and security - is, according to our ethical traditions, intrinsically evil. Pain, for example, is prima facie worthy of being avoided or diminished as an end in itself and for the sake of the being whose experiential welfare is concerned. Ethical veganism argues that this premise is basic: it serves as an absolute minimum; a starting point for further moral deliberations.
(To clarify, “suffering,” for me, is a technical term: an action that involves pain, prolonged or otherwise; an action that damages an interest.)
For evidence of B consider the following:
The United States Constitution and its dedication to the pursuit of happiness. Happiness is assumed to be what we exist to achieve, which necessarily implies that its counter, suffering, is to be avoided because it impedes the realization of this end. The Golden Rule prescribes, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This prescription asks us to imagine ourselves in the position of those suffering, for example, which reasonably engenders a perceived duty to relieve suffering: the impersonal badness of suffering is derived from impartial observation.
Utilitarianism is premised on the recognition of the badness of suffering. In rights discourse, there is an assumed harm (i.e., suffering) experienced when moral agents (and moral patients) have certain interests violated: rights provide this wall of protection. Most fundamentally, the right not to be the property of another because of the inseparable harm associated with being a “thing” (e.g., slavery). (Rights also have their “positive” prescriptions, but that’s another matter.)
Karl Popper, an ethical hedonist, wrote, “I believe that there is, from the ethical point of view, no symmetry between suffering and happiness, or between pain and pleasure. (…) human suffering makes a direct moral appeal for help…” The doctrine of humanitarianism is equally concerned with relieving suffering: “…humanitarian efforts seek a positive addition to the happiness of sentient beings, it is to make the unhappy happy…”
Buddhism considers liberation from suffering as basic for leading a holy life and attaining nirvana. Abstinence from causing pain or harm to other beings is a central tenet of Hinduism.
From a different line of reasoning, this premise is implied. Aristotle wrote, “Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.” Echoing Aristotle’s argument that suffering has intrinsic benefits, some argue that experiences of suffering strengthen character. Christianity certainly suggests this. The existence of suffering, for the Christian, does not negate the existence of God because, as fallible beings, we lack the necessary omniscience to make the claim that suffering is experienced without cause; Christianity proffers such a good cause. The philosophy of Gandhi also assumed a certain existentialist benefit to the experience of suffering: On this logic, suffering - an experience that would otherwise be avoided - purifies the sufferer. The underlying assumption to these arguments is that a greater good is to be achieved by current suffering. In each of these theories, however, while they seemingly endorse suffering, presuppose the intrinsic badness of suffering. If suffering-as-bad wasn’t assumed, this explicit appeal to a consequentalist benefit would be incoherent: Why would an experience that I desire to have A) need to be justified by an appeal to another greater end and B), within the context of eternal salvation or existentialist benefit, it stands to reason that whatever the experience is, it must harm you in some way - you don’t want it to occur - so a future good is assumed to justify the bad experience.
Further, Aristotle, and Kant for that matter, cannot reasonably separate the experience of suffering from the realization of their versions of “the good life.” It seems reasonable to argue that a life of indefinite suffering necessarily impedes one’s efforts to participate in self-government or act according to the categorical imperative. The reason is manifest: Prolonged pain, for example, is anathema to being of the state of mind where one can universalize moral rules, for example. Pain is your life, not morality.
My conclusion then is that arbitrary or not, there are certain premises we hold very strongly. The existence of a strongly held premise doesn’t define its ethical nature; however, it does suggest a certain kind of importance. Of course, we are speciesists: it’s a premise we strongly hold. However, this has more to do, as does our failure to view all suffering as morally important, with a flaw in our reasoning than with a deliberate and honest application of our ethical beliefs. We don’t take the “moral point of view” when considering most of our actions. Perhaps we will one day no longer accept the evil of suffering, however, that would include a rejection of much of our ethical history. We are not there yet.
Crossposted @ That Vegan Girl
I often simply say something along the lines of this:
We all draw our lines somewhere. For many people the line is between dogs and pigs or cats and cows. They won’t eat some types of cute animals, but they will eat other types of cute animals. My line is between animals and plants. I’ll eat plants, but not animals.