Cetacean Rights

 

Where could we have gotten the destructive idea that this world is ours to do as we please, that humans are so utterly special that we are the only ones privileged with a 'soul'? Where could we have gotten the destructive idea that we are utterly separate from this whole cosmos thing, that our ability to reason is more important than our ability to feel and that we are therefore above natural instincts, and indeed above all things natural? Where could we have gotten the destructive idea that we are free to put our desire for materials and status above the principle of life, to chase our desires to the ends of the earth, or rather, the end of the earth?

The answers are more nuanced than I can give here, and vary across the world. But here in the West, Judeo-Christian religion, Enlightenment individualism and Consumerism, respectively, would be a good place to start! To carry these prejudices is part of being a 'civilized' human being, as opposed to a 'savage', or, heaven forbid, some form of hippy!

For too long we have confused 'civilization' with striving to be better than everything else, rather than being benevolent toward everything else. The so-called civilized ones chose mastery over mutuality, and imposed binary concepts (nature / civilization, black / white, master / slave, self / other, man / woman, good / evil) upon a world where these concepts are irrelevant illusions. Civilization has not tempered violence out of Man, and indeed, if you look at the superpowers of history, civilization has only given them new and exciting ways to create and / or destroy things. In short, if you move the posts which mark out what is civilized, civilization as we know it does not score terribly well.

It took us long enough to recognise the basic rights of fellow humans in our own societies, let alone those half way across the world. Well, now a group of humans has redeemed us all somewhat and extended those basic rights to a non-human species; the cetaceans.

Perhaps this indicates that our view of nature is finally changing. Maybe the rights of dolphin and whale will be a foot in the door for us to mature into a real civilization. The first step on a long, long path to moral and technological enlightenment! For now at least the Cetaceans populations of India are free from human abuse and predation, and perhaps this will spread across the rest of the world. Cetaceans have the same basic rights not to be harmed or exploited that human beings do (although oddly enough, the environment and prey they need to survive are not necessarily protected). Let us take a direct look at this legalistic morality, from the first seven clauses of the bill of rights found at cetaceanrights.org:

i) Every individual cetacean has the right to life.

ii) No cetacean should be held in captivity or servitude; be subject to cruel treatment; or be removed from their natural environment.

iii) All cetaceans have the right to freedom of movement and residence within their natural environment.

iv) No cetacean is the property of any State, corporation, human group or individual.

v) Cetaceans have the right to the protection of their natural environment.

vi) Cetaceans have the right not to be subject to the disruption of their cultures.

vii) The rights, freedoms and norms set forth in this Declaration should be protected under international and domestic law.

Now that whales and dolphins are by law immune to the harpoon and the net, what of similarly intelligent creatures? Pachyderms are not only beautiful and awe-inspiring, but have brains as complex as our own. Is it right to turn them into ivory or use them as circus entertainment? And bringing things closer to home, what about Primates? Not only do they form complex societies, but some of them can use language in a clever and intuitive way.

Where can the line possibly be drawn? Why does an animal species need to be intelligent, accustomed to 'family values' and fully self-aware for us to stop killing them and plundering their habitats? The principle of life, the axiom of harm not lest thou be harmed, should be enough for us to respect all that breathes, at least to the extent that we do not intrude upon their basic 'liberty' to survive, thrive or perish in their native environments (how arrogant of me to even use liberty in such a way!)

But here is the real rub. Why should I care about a whale, a dolphin or an orangutang when my own economic situation is dire. Lets say I have a child on the way, I can't afford to pay my electricity bills, nor go out with my friends. That guy I hated from school is driving an executive motorized vehicle and going out with a fashion model whilst I am forever stuck on sweaty public transport solutions, going out with with no one at all. Why should I pay interest to such abstract concerns which are so distant from my own?

I guess the obvious answer is that it is not an abstract notion, and that without environmental awareness we are all pretty much dead in the long run - so it is something of enlightened self-interested at the very least. Secondly, the problems facing us are not mutually exclusive. You are not either 'in it for the Whales' or 'in it for the poor' or 'in it for yourself'. If you see the human world as entirely separate from nature, than you might prioritise one over the other to the extent that everything outside of your sphere of experience effectively ceases to exist. A word for this kind of closed-mindedness is 'ignorance' (although 'irresponsible' would probably be better, as it can account for those who know but do not care). If you see us all as belonging to one thing, nature, it is inconsistant to make this separation. You can care about both and all. Indeed, going to that pro-whale protest, you might meet that pro-squatter girl who helps you sort out with your housing problem.

However, I am a romantic mind, and I will go one step further. To care about a distant sea mammal has a far deeper and more resonating purpose. We have lost a sense of wonder, our flat lives dominated by trash entertainment, material excess and soul-crushing labour. Our eyes see nary further than the walls of our city, and it is a rare occasion that we take in the literal depth of a hilly landscape or the sheer wonder of a starry sky. Our trees stand in neat rows, our parks are contrived and dull, our rivers are hidden beneath concrete slabs. Our art is in decay, our heroes are artificial faces and withered heroin-inflicted innards, our natural souls are dying. A bit of wildness will help inject our lives with the real excitement and sense of belonging which cannot be provided by human societies alone.

We need causes to fight for. We need to live for something beyond the four walls of a house and the weekend trip to a shopping mall. This is the vitality of existence. This is the battle that we need to rise up and fight. This is the antidote to nihilism, disconnection, depression, meaninglessness.

Preserving incredible creatures for the future is part of that purpose, and part of our common inheritance.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Anthropomorphism and Nature - Part II

In the first part of this article I argued against the sentiments of anthropomorphism - that is, applying human characteristics to natural elements. Now I would like to continue by arguing that we do not need to make something human in order to be concerned with it, and that we should not harm the 'sacred' phenomena that is life.

Animals do not need to be changed into human shape to qualify as 'moral agents'. If we accept the typically scientific world view that things exist outside of our perception, that the world exists independent of being observed by us, then the implications for all life on the planet should be astounding: if a dog barks in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does the dog still bark? We answer yes. It means that independent of your valuation of life, that life exists and is very real; that life is a valid moral agent. It is not anthropomorphic to suggest that all life shares some kind of perception, and inner driving force; the internal process that goes on inside of you, also exists in that other life. It exists in all life as a universal.

We seem to forget all too often that things exist independently of us. We can only see the world from one perspective, and it is understandable that we cannot see it from all angles and create a total theory of how it works. However, to 'imagine' a universal code of ethics we do not need anything other than our one perspective. It is the work of our powerful minds, not the work of some natural principle, that can lift human beings above nature, and allow us to view the world from a loftier perspective.

The rational mind - which our western tradition has separated from nature for better or worse - can work out how to change this world, but it cannot tell us why we ought to in the first place. For the why, we have feeling. We have the principle of pain and pleasure; to avoid one and to seek the other. With this principle, we can infer that others are capable of feeling some kind of physical pleasure or pain, joy or anguish. Even if those feelings are different to ours in degree, they are not different in kind - a jellyfish may experience pain in a way different to you, but nonetheless it is still some kind of pain. (Whether it is possible for scientific research to contradict this is unknown to me at this point. However, the appeal of a universal driving force within all living entities seems more intuitive). Even if a creature is incapable of emotional suffering (whatever that means), it's actual body can still be hurt.

Weighing it up -

The question remains as to how much we value pleasure and pain, and how much more we consider human beings over other entities. I do believe we should consider human beings as most valuable (perhaps due to nothing more than a species bias). This 'humans first' attitude does not give us the right to do as we please. Whilst human suffering should be averted over animal suffering, human pleasure should not be placed above animal suffering. In effect, I do not feel that one 'unit' of human pleasure is worth causing one 'unit' of animal pain, and we can therefore only accept pleasure provided it causes no, or minimal, pain.

Which immediately leads to the following question. What is this grounded in?

You might be asking how an entity being able to perceive gives it the right to live. It doesn't. It just means that it's existence is as real as yours, even though it exists differently to you. However, just because something does not have a magically-generated, "god given" right to live free from pain, nor then do you have the right to inflict it, unless you have a good reason to.

Both of these 'rights' are based on mischief - the right to live is just random sentiment, based on nothing more than ones own displeasure at suffering. But equally the right to kill something is based on being able to kill it, and enacting upon that urge; effectively, it is the right of the intelligent and strong to overcome a weaker adversary. This is nothing if not the basest and lowest means to determine who should have what in life. It is an appeal to force, and humanity should be long past such a poor weighing up of the value by this stage in our evolution.

The safest bet in this instance must be to assume that nothing has rights to protect it, yet no one has rights to harm it, outside of necessity. Which means we are agnostics, and can but leave it alone. Except to avert catastrophe, or harm to humans, and to study it, I do not believe nature should be interfered with, nor romanticised. It is a complex system, and it may well be beyond our reach altogether.

Animals in our societies -

To my mind, once we come to the conclusion that personifying nature is a distortion of reality, we lose the notion that nature is specifically designed for us, and we become more cautious about tampering with nature, and we change the way we perceive animals in nature, and we then lose the 'right' to harm animals in our own societies. This is because we are no longer a part of nature, and it is in fact we who shape nature with our minds, and then profess to learn from it! As such, any appeals to nature are null and void. Whatever 'natural laws' may or may not exist out there are irrelevant to our profoundly unnatural species.

Worse than our treatment of animals outside of our societies are those distorted by romantic sentiments and comfortable lies - those creatures directly under our control. By anthropomorphizing 'culturally relevant' animals as happy dairy cows, as jolly sheep, as singing and dancing hens, we are hiding the truth behind industries that are a blight on our ethical record. Iron shackles, killings gone wrong, a world without sunlight, warehouses full of blood and shit and suffering; this is the price people are willing to pay for their pleasures.

To see the scale of this reality requires a clear and rational mind, to understand the full ethical implications of our cultural practices and our personal choices. It then requires an emotional commitment to wish no-harm upon creatures quite radically different from us, but nonetheless sharing one of the universal principles of all life; to avoid suffering.

We must first dispel the myths, and confine the romance of anthropomorphism to where it belongs. Such romantic perceptions are the most innocent form of tyranny, but they allow mass-violence to triumph, and drain reality of its urgency, trivializing the massive, unnecessary suffering we cause on a daily basis.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Aren’t we grand. - By George Dunn

Aren’t we grand.

We are animals, first and foremost- we want to survive, to reproduce, to eat and sleep and be alive for the sake of it because that's what our body tells us to do. But it seems that we have an extra thing tacked onto us, a thing that many call a mind, and this thing seems to give us the power to override what we might consider our more natural desires, our instincts. This power has immense potential.

Where many (if not all) other animals are slaves to their desires, we can break free;  and so when our body tells us to eat, to sleep, to mate, to run or to stand our ground we are not obliged to agree, no, we can deny them. We can stay up all night despite of our fatigue, or sleep when we are already well rested; eat nothing when our belly rumbles, or eat more when we are full; stand up to threat or run from that which is harmless. As humans, it seems, we have a nature that can transcend nature... Are we not then God's?

There are many, I'm sure, that would love to subscribe to this notion: the human as God, with the divine power to do as He wishes! To act for reasons that exist outside of His body, to ignore His natural inclinations and act instead in the name of some perceived absolute Good. It is this sort of thought that has led religions past and present to brand the desires of the body as lesser, immoral, evil. It allows humans to stand upon a pedestal of egotism, and to look down upon all else and to genuinely believe that this power to ignore ones instinct makes them better.

Well, then, does it? Is our capacity to negate nature enough to stamp our superiority upon the world of living things? There is the argument that this ability makes us free, which in turn makes us capable of moral decisions: we humans, the moral animal- free to do that which is Good! And so, freedom is part of human nature, and surely it is better to be free than not?

Perhaps.

But if we are free because we can choose not to follow our instincts, then it can be said that we are free in so far as that we are not inclined to do one thing over another. The less inclined we are, the more free we are. And so it must follow that he who has no inclination towards either good or bad is more free than he who is inclined towards that which is good... and then surely he who only does what is good is even less free than he who is only inclined towards that which is good. And so we have it, that the most free is the one who acts with complete indifference! The one who only does good is a slave, just like the other animals, unable to negate his desires: he just desires that which is good. Is it really better to be free?

It appears that any freedom that pertains to human nature is not so clearly a hallmark of our superiority, but evidence of an immense capacity that should be treated with caution. Yes, it is the capacity to act well, to be good, and perhaps this is the way that we are inclined (although I see no evidence that this is the case), but it is equally the capacity to do wrong, to be evil. We have a power, as I have said, to negate whatever inclination we have, natural or otherwise, and therefore we have the capacity to act terribly, negating all that our intuition tells us. And, in doing so, we will likely pat ourselves on the back, raise our glasses and cheer as we and only we could have done this! We, humans, free to negate nature, free to destroy and annihilate, to create and nurture... whatever we do, it will be grand, as it could have only been us. Maybe we are superior, insofar as we are more powerful, but better? The ego to make such a claim could only be human.

By George Dunn

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Human Nature' Issue 36

Peter Singer: - By Samuel Mack-Poole

Would you like (relative) infanticide with (relative) bestiality? An insight into the morality of Peter Singer:

Since Peter Singer’s controversial interview with Richard Dawkins, his prominence amongst the global intelligentsia is on the rise. He has been lauded by Dawkins as the “most moral man” he knows. This, obviously, is quite an endorsement from one of the world’s most publicity hungry scientists. But, as philosophers, we should question Singer’s arguments. It is our duty to do so. For if we don’t, the dogmatists will. And we all know how easy it is to argue with a dogmatist…

One of Peter Singer’s more controversial arguments (to the non-scientifically minded) is that we are not special just through the virtue of belonging to the species Homo sapien sapien (please note that we are a species of a common ancestor Homo sapien within two sub-species; our evolutionary cousin being Homo sapien neanderthalensis).

It is a scientific fact that we are animals. That is not in doubt. However, what we should question is: how are we unique or ‘special’? Singer has said in an interview, which is on YouTube, that humans have an ability to see their lives in a “biographical sense”. Humans can remember the past and plan for the future to a greater extent than any other species. He also states that humans “admittedly have capacities to reason and use language that exceeds any non-human animal.”

Despite this, Singer argues, quite truthfully, that not all humans have this ability. New-born infants don’t, and whilst I don’t want to broaden this debate too much, an embryo certainly doesn’t. Personally, I think Singer’s arguments regarding new-born infants are flawed. According to a Kant’s Doctrine of Right:

“Due to the congenital nature of life per se, every parent is morally obligated to care for their child until they are able to care for themselves. As a child has no ability to consent to be born, it is the moral duty and obligation to provide care and sustenance for their child.”

This, to me, highlights a moral case for every, and any, parent taking responsibly for their child – even in the case of disability. Singer rejects this argument, quite simply, because he does not think all human life is worth saving. He peremptorily rejects traditional and conservative moral values -- which isn’t necessarily a bad thing -- by claiming only life that is fully aware, sentient and has consciousness worthy of being regarded as a person.

In his own words, Singer has stated:

“I use the term "person" to refer to a being who (sic) is capable of anticipating the future, of having wants and desires for the future.”

Not only is this grammatically incorrect, but this is a very narrow way of valuing human species.  Furthermore, this acute argument leaves Singer wide open to a very slippery slope – almost a forty-five degree glacier. If a new born baby, which can survive independent of its biological mother, doesn’t meet Singer’s highly subjective criteria, does a one year old child? What about a toddler that is not capable of speech, but who can think of plans? How “new” is new-born? It would be unfair, however, not to mention biased, of me to misrepresent Singer.

He only advocates infanticide when the parents and doctors have agreed it is in the best interests of the child – in the case of extremely severe disability. He is very careful to be relative – for morality can only be applied to special circumstances. He, in no way, shape or form, advocates the, dare I say it, bestial butchering of hundreds of healthy new-borns.

 This, naturally, leads very nicely onto Singer’s views on bestiality. He doesn’t blindly believe that any sexual activity with an animal is “wrong” per se. In no way is sexual behaviour with animals a social norm – unless you are a young male from a rural area (you can look at Kinsey’s statistics for yourself) -- yet it is true that since the dawn of man, members of our species have chosen to interact sexually with non-human animals. As there are biblical statutes on the matter, it is quite clear a law was created to stop humans doing something that the majority did not.

However, a biblical approach to life is not (actively) followed by most in modern Britain. The majority of men are Onanists; we are, for the most, a liberal and accepting society. Sodomy, homosexuality -- amongst both genders -- can be practiced openly. As this is the case, why is sex with animals deemed “immoral” and illegal?

Singer has written an article called Heavy Petting in which he outlines his views on Zoophilia – after all, bestiality has such a bad name.  It is implied that Singer is a consequentialist (someone who believes the consequence(s) of one's action determines its moral value) and that he does not take a strictly rights-based approach to ethical issues. 

The following quote will illustrate Singer’s position:

“Sex with animals does not always involve cruelty.”

If both parties experience “mutually satisfying activities” of a sexual nature, Singer does not think the act is inherently immoral. However, Singer conveniently ignores the glaringly obvious, almost neon white, elephant in the room: consent! Tom Regan, a fellow philosopher, correctly states that the same argument can be used to validate a paedophile’s lust for children. If the logic is not sound in all contexts, the argument is invalid – isn’t it?

For some reason, my moral compass is not offended by the thought of a woman riding naked on a horse, and reaching orgasm as a result – but I am offended by the thought of a man fucking a sheep. I have to be honest, and admit to my moral hypocrisy; I have to work on my contradictions. In the end, I guess, I have to admit that I’m only (a) human (animal).

By Samuel Mack-Poole

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Animals' Issue 27