Animal Rights

ON THE HOLT - MCGINN ANIMAL RIGHTS INTERCHANGE

There was a forum discussion about an interchange between Holt and McGinn
Following is the text of a contribution that I made

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I’ve been interested in philosophy for a long time – though not as an end in itself, visit my Website: http: / / www.horizons-2000.org

When I “do” metaphysics [in the philosophical sense metaphysics is about the nature of reality] I find that process to be cognitively driven though motivated and guided by emotion

In ethics and morals, I find the situation reversed. My feelings and emotions are primary but informed by reflection - including the reflections of others. There’s nothing intrinsically sentimental about being emotional in this world – what ties us in, binds us into our social setting, is the place of experience of beauty and much of right and wrong. Emotion provides a lion’s share of real premises for reason in ethics. This, of course, raises the question of common standards or universality in ethics. There are questions that ethics can be universalized but lets assume the case. I suggest that a primary way to universalization in ethics would be through an exploration of the actual structure of feelings and motivations. I would ask, for example, not only “Why should I be unselfish?” but “Why am I selfish in some situations and generous in others?” Psychoanalysis would be one approach, but it’s just an example of an approach - I’m not trying to make a case for any particular approach to analysis of feeling and motivation. In this process reason will play a supporting role or, perhaps, a number of supporting roles such as analysis of the concepts [selflessness...] and analysis of relations among my feelings and motivations

Here are some thoughts / feelings that I have or have had. Causing pain is wrong. Eating meat is questionable - I eat meat but maybe I shouldn’t - I could become a vegetarian, it’s healthy. Most people in the world eat nowhere near as much meat as we do in America. When I was a child I saw our cook kill a chicken and later I could not eat the cooked meat. I’m glad I do not work in a slaughterhouse and will be quite happy to never visit one. I wonder whether I should be grateful to slaughterhouse workers for doing society’s dirty work. McGinn writes that the meat industry is a vile blot on the moral history of humankind [mankind]. Maybe, but I think that assumes humankind is better than he-she actually is. I dislike experimenting with animals or human beings [I’m with anyone who thinks this is “sickening”] except that I think its ok for an adult to experiment on him / herself for the sake of the experience, or in the interest of science

I think that violence by animal rights activists is not right, but it’s certainly not worse than many other violent pursuits. I do think people who are violent in the name of the right or the good would do well to consider the origins of their actions

I think hunting is ok in societies where it’s an integral part of traditional life. I’m aware that if I go to the jungles of the tropics or the wilds of Alaska, I may be the one being hunted. I wonder whether traditional hunters in “hunter-gatherer” societies enjoyed a sort of equality with animals, a sort of Russian Roulette where the hunter did not have high-powered rifles or protection of jeeps. Hunting for sport... its not sport unless the “hunter” is on equal footing with the hunted, e.g. hunting a lion with a spear and wearing perhaps a loincloth... an affair in which the “hunter” may be clawed quite as well as he may do the clawing

I sometimes think there is something wrong with our treatment of pets - even kind and pampered treatment. How awful it must be to survive on pet-food year after year, tolerable only in species that have had independence bred out of them. I find the pampering to be a disguised relative of the bullying of animals that McGinn writes about

It all points to a rather miserable side of our species

But I do feel that humankind, after all, also has much to feel good about and has -intrinsically and not by comparison- great potential. We ought not to need to feel good by making others or other species “feel bad.” Part of the greatness is the ability to make choices - and that includes the choice to impose no harm

Document Status, June 7, 2003

No action needed

Key idea: emotion or feeling is at least equal to intellect in moral questions; traditional and small societies are a source of information on morals and the nature of morals